Come Downstairs and Say Hello
by wrathkitty
Summary: Selective mutism, passive aggressiveness, romance, and turrets, all wrapped up into one what-if-Chell-caught-Wheatley fic. Sticking as closely to canon as possible, which is an exercise in futility given that this is a what-if. But I digress.
1. THE PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE:

THE PROLOGUE

"Space! Ah! Augh!"

_That really worked?_ she thought, stunned. A portal on the moon? It'd been a longshot, to be sure – hell, more than a long shot. More like utter insanity.

"Let go! We're in space!"

Still in a daze, she focused on the turquoise optic before her, which had shrunk to a pinpoint and was looking every which way, frantic, panicking –

"Space?" The yellow identity core came into sight and then whizzed past, amongst the stars at last and shouting as he flew, "SPACE! SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACE…!"

Nice to know one member of their little party was happy with this most recent turn of events.

Squinting against the debris flying towards her, she doggedly turned her attention back to the task at hand and began weighing her options – all two of them: Letting go, or hanging on.

Not surprisingly, her compatriot favored the latter.

"Let go! Let go!" he was begging, apparently oblivious – or not caring – that he was requesting she trade her life for his. "I'm still connected! I can pull myself in! I can still fix this!"

_"I already fixed it!"_ snapped another voice. _"And you are **not **coming back!"_

His optic flared, blinking wildly as the red-and-black robotic arm came into his line of vision, creeping closer, reaching...

"Oh no," he cried. "Change of plans – hold on to me – tighter! Ah! Grab me, grab me –"

_SMACK!_

The arm struck, somehow managing to simultaneously knock the core out of her hands and clamp its pincers around her right wrist. The core rushed past in a blur, headed for the stars; without thinking, she flung her opposite hand out, just in time to hook one finger around the handle of its battered chassis.

"— grab me, grab me, grab me – _Oh!_ You did!"

_"Yes, she did,"_ snapped that same venomous voice. _"But rest assured that I'm going to make you wish she hadn't."_

Something was drawing them through the portal, out of the vacuum of space and back into the facility – both equally fatal scenarios as far as she was concerned. Problem was, she felt too tired to care.

Down, down they went, until they tumbled to the floor, victim once again to the Earth's gravitational pull. Unconsciousness beckoned, but she made herself close her other three fingers and thumb around the core's handle before shutting her eyes.

_ "Congratulations. You spared the moon from having a moron in permanent orbit. Now let the little idiot go."_

"No! Do _not_ let the little idiot go! _Please!_ Please wake up! I can hack our way out of here! We can still escape!"

_ "You're dumber than I thought if you entrust your life to a tumor. Let him go."_

"Ooh, or, alternate plan here, always nice to have options – you could…Wake up! And escape! With me!"

He fell silent, waiting hopefully for some sort of response, but she couldn't muster so much as a grimace.

Undeterred, he launched into a second round of dogged encouragement, saying, "C'mon, crack open an eye; just need the one, two's superfluous, really; then get the legs moving – but, just so we're clear, you'll need _both_ legs, unlike the eye. Won't get too far on just one leg -"

_"You should try groveling next. Whining doesn't seem to be working."_

"Oi-oi! C'mon, partners again, right? Just like the old days?"

_ "Ah. Yes. The old days. When you were trying to murder her. Here, I'll put you on, just in case she's already forgotten –" _

His voice again, recorded now, saying, "'Holmes versus Moriarty…Aristotle versus MASHY SPIKE PLATES!'"

"I-I…I didn't _mean_ that! I didn't!"

_ "Oh, but you did. And when she wakes up, I'll be sure to tell you just how much you meant it."_

"Don't listen to her! She's lying, she's –"

Another pause, and then another recording: "I loathe you. You arrogant, smugly quiet, awful jump-suited monster of a woman."

_"Shall I continue? You've provided a multitude of evidence. Very convincing."_

"N-no, you – you don't understand! I meant it _then_, I don't mean it _now_ – oh, just wake up, _please_ –"

She heard the hum of the robotic arm, felt the slight vibration as the clamps came around the core's other handle. He began protesting, pleading – all on his own behalf, of course – and then there was an experimental tug.

What to do? Keep hanging on, or let the little blue bastard kick the bucket and get a much-deserved taste of Android Hell?

"_He's not worth saving. He's not even worth incinerating. But if he means that much to you, I'll tell him about the time I saw a deer – before I kill him."_

She didn't loosen her grip, allowing herself to be dragged several feet across the floor.

"HA!" he shouted, triumphant. _"That's_ loyalty for you! _That's_ friendship!"

_ "Or rigor mortis. Funny how quickly it sets in."_

"What?!" His handle twitched, and he started pleading in earnest all over again, saying, "Don't be dead! Can you hear me? She'll kill us both! Dead! Gone! Dos muerte – "

_"Un muerto," _the voice corrected_. "I'm not going to kill her. Just you."_

At this declaration, she scrounged up her last ounce of remaining energy and put her long-dormant vocal cords to use. The result was little more than a croak, but intelligible enough to get her point across.

"No."

This utterance was met with stunned silence, broken after a few seconds by an astonished, "Did you – and my auditory processors are doing some pretty _mad_ things at the moment, won't deny that, but – did you just talk? As in, verbalize a statement? Open your mouth and put forth words? Well, one word, but still quite tremendous…"

Chell fainted.


	2. THE DIAGNOSIS

CHAPTER TWO:

THE DIAGNOSIS

"Selective mutism," was what the Aperture psychologist had told her father. Even into adulthood, Chell resented the term – the implication that _she_ was the one in control of when and where her tongue tied up, when in fact it was the opposite.

It wasn't a question of whether she did or didn't "feel" like talking – she wanted to talk, desperately so. But with the exception of her dad, being in the presence of others caused her anxiety to skyrocket, and reduced her methods of communication to nodding, shaking her head, and pointing.

"She'll grow out of it." Yet another cookie-cutter, unhelpful statement from the aforementioned psychologist.

_Grow out of it when?_ Chell wanted to ask at the time. _How? Why am I like this? What's wrong with me? _But she said nothing, sitting there beside her dad as he took copious notes about the relaxation techniques suggested by the therapist.

For more than a year after that initial appointment, Chell and her father practiced these strategies, all designed to ease her into being more verbally communicative. Their hard work paid off. She gradually worked her way up from writing her answers down on sticky notes for the teacher to share with the other students, to actually whispering her answers to her teacher.

By the following spring, she was able to present her science fair project in front of her class. Her voice was quiet, and every single ear in the room was strained, but Chell articulated the findings of her potato battery experiment from start to finish and earned an A-plus.

"Of course I got an A," she complained that night as her dad was tucking her into bed. "I did a potato battery _last_ year. It's stupid."

"Yeah," he agreed. "But last year you weren't able to present your report. This year you could."

"I guess so," she admitted dubiously, then fixed her dad with a happy smile. "You proud of me?"

"You betcha," he replied with a laugh. He handed Chell her much-loved stuffed toy Companion Cube, and continued, "I'm sorry I wasn't there to see it. But you know what tomorrow is, though, right?"

Tomorrow was Aperture's annual Bring Your Daughter to Work Day. Chell always went in the hope of seeing a real-life mantis man.

"We'll get to spend the day together," he said, smiling. "It's my favorite work day out of the whole year."

"Dad," she observed solemnly. "You're a sap."

He laughed again and gave her a hug before standing up to leave. "Can you blame me? G'night, Chell-bell."

"Night," she yawned.

Through rapidly-closing eyes, Chell watched as he switched off the light and then turned back to look at her, silhouetted in the doorway. "Love you."

"L'v'you too," she mumbled, already drifting off to sleep.

The next morning she accompanied her father to the lab where he worked as a security guard, sticking to him like glue as he went throughout his day. There were no mantis-men sightings, but the action picked up towards mid-afternoon when more announcements started coming over the PA, every once in awhile from Mr. Johnson himself. Pre-recorded, obviously, but still pretty funny:

_ "If I make it to this day – and I damn well better make it, or those bastards in Washington can take my moon rocks and shove 'em up their star-spangled asses –"_

_ "Mr. Johnson!"_

_ "Huh? Oh. Sorry. Shove it up their –"_

_ "Mr. Johnson…"_

_ "Anyway, I was just telling Caroline here that if I make it to this day – the day that they pour my brain into a computer and push the button – that it's all thanks to me, her, and those pinheads down in engineering. You know what the nurse brought me yesterday with my lunch? Lemonade! Y'know what I told her? That she was fired! And that I was gonna burn her house down with a combustible lemon!"_

Bored, Chell wandered to the opposite end of the lab, which consisted of several large windows overlooking a chamber. Suspended from the center of the ceiling was a massive, vaguely humanoid-shaped machine with multiple spheres attached. People in lab coats milled around beneath of it, running to and fro, talking excitedly and scribbling on clipboards.

Her father had followed her over, and out of habit she tugged on his arm and pointed to the window.

"Use your words, Chell," he said.

She made him lean down so she could whisper into his ear; she'd gotten better about talking in public, but the unfamiliar faces of her father's colleagues made her uncomfortable.

"What's going on?" she asked, standing on tiptoe. "Everyone down there looks nervous."

"Just a routine test," he answered, straightening. He sounded at ease, but out of the corner of her eye, Chell saw him shift his weight to his left side; in addition to his Aperture-issued Beretta, he also carried a non-regulation pistol strapped to his ankle. Something was up.

"Preparing to initiate," came a booming voice over the loudspeaker. "On my mark from twenty…mark. Nineteen…eighteen…"

Chell peered through the glass, watching intently. Screens displaying the countdown were on every wall of the room below, and all faces were now turned towards the hulking entity hanging in the middle of the chamber.

"Four…three…two…one…Activation initiated."

There was a moment of breathless silence, and then the low, thundering sound of gears shifting could be heard throughout the facility. Three discs that Chell hadn't noticed earlier began to spin at the top of the ceiling, slowly at first, then gradually picking up speed. On them she was able to make out the letters G, L, a lower-case A, D, O and S, flashing by on every rotation.

What did they stand for?

A scientist came to stand beside her dad, who asked in a low voice, "What's the plan, Henry? Think she'll go ape again? Like last time?"

"Nah," answered the other man. "Not with the new morality core we installed. The intelligence-dampening one was a good try, but all it did was piss her off." He laughed and added, "Dougie here just wants to send us all to the moon, though, don't you?"

Chell glanced over, her eyes falling upon the person in question. He didn't appear to have heard the comment, too focused on watching the proceedings through the window.

Curious why he looked so worried, she focused her eyes back onto the machine below, which now appeared to be stirring ever so slightly. The screens surrounding it no longer displayed numbers, and were instead flashing random images.

A voice came over the PA system again, but a different one this time – robotic, feminine, and slightly pedantic.

_ "A little neurotoxin goes a long way…Thank you. From the bottom of the heart you forgot to attach to me."_

Claxons started wailing a second later.

"Jesus Christ, it –"

"RUN!"

"RED PHONE! RED PHONE!"

Every person in the lab bolted for the exit, scrambling and shouting. At eight years old, Chell was too big to be carried, but her father grabbed her and joined Henry and Doug and the throngs of other people.

She clung to him, arms around his neck, legs locked around his waist, as he followed the crowd for several minutes. It was pandemonium, everyone shoving and pushing to try and get away the fastest – but getting away from what? Where was the enemy?

Her dad abruptly ducked into a hallway, leaving the chaos behind them, and started jogging down the empty corridor. As they approached the door at the end of the hall, his grip on Chell loosened, and he set her down, keeping her close.

"You'll be safe in here," he said as he fumbled for his key card. Chell tilted her chin up, reading the sign posted above the door.

**_WARNING! _**

**_Hermetic seals! _**

**_HELP US HELP YOU KEEP SCIENCE SAFE FROM HERMITS AND AQUATIC MAMMALS_**

Spray painted onto the door was additional signage, emblazoned in large red letters:

**- OUT OF ORDER -**

The door swung open and he pushed her through, making her sit on the chair that had been placed in the corner.

"Do not leave this room," he ordered, kneeling down in front of her. He was calm, but his eyes were frantic. "Do you understand?"

She nodded, unable to speak. She'd never heard him sound so angry.

He stood and began fiddling with a keypad on the wall, pressing in a multi-digit code. Contrary to the sign on the door, the room was in perfect working order; "HS-Standby" appeared on the keypad screen, followed by, "Countdown?"

Chell watched her dad press the buttons marked 'one' and 'zero' and then the pound key. "10 sec" scrolled across the screen.

He turned, told her he loved her, and hugged her tight. Then he left, locking the door behind him. The panel beeped a second later, accompanied by a tinny voice that announced, "System is offline. Temporary life support activated."

There was a whooshing sound, and Chell felt a faint breeze brush past her face, replacing the musty scent of the room with a fresher, slightly antiseptic odor.

She started to tremble.

_Find your happy place. Where's your happy place?_

She closed her eyes and imagined glo-ball night at the bowling alley, where she'd been less than twenty-four hours earlier to celebrate her successful science fair project. As always, her dad kept throwing gutter balls to ensure she would win.

Her happy place was with her dad.

Chell's throat unstuck at last, and she was able to eke out the words she'd tried to say to him as he was telling her goodbye.

"I love you," she whispered into the darkness.

* * *

The trauma of losing her father caused Chell's voice to retreat all over again. 'Neurotoxin' and 'picosecond' were terms that meant nothing to her, but she could grasp the miles-deep hurt that accompanied the word 'dead.'

She and the other survivors of that cataclysmic Bring Your Daughter to Work Day were placed into quarantine, squirreled away as the remaining Aperture scientists scrambled to solve the hell in which they'd found themselves.

Over the next four years, gaunt-faced adults tried to maintain some semblance of normalcy for her and the other orphaned youngsters in Habitat 27. But indoor playgrounds and portal guns don't mix, and Chell quickly realized they were no more than lab rats being groomed for some unknown, ultimate test.

"Why are we doing this?" complained one of Chell's compatriots after a particularly grueling Turret Tuesday. All morning, they'd spent hours running and ducking behind storage cubes, trying to dodge the sentry turrets' endless spray of blue and orange paintballs.

"It's training," another boy muttered. "They're running out of test subjects."

His name was Marc, and like Chell, he had ascertained the real reasons behind Turret Tuesdays, Friendly Energy Pellet Polo, and all their other cleverly-named calisthenics: Too many people were dying in the Enrichment Center. The most obvious solution was to decrease the lethality of the tests, but doing so decreased the purity of the Science…which meant any able-bodied individual, regardless of age, was now a potential candidate for an orange jumpsuit.

"What do you mean they're running out of test subjects?" piped up a girl named Emily. Only seven years old, she was the youngest of their group, and was wolfing down her lunchtime bowl of Aperture Cheery Owes without a care in the world.

Marc hesitated, debating whether to share the awful truth, and then decided against it.

"It means that your hair is going to permanently turn blue if you don't get better at dodging those turrets," he teased, giving one of Emily's braids a playful tug.

Emily beamed back at him, unconcerned with the state of her plaits.

"I like the turrets," she answered around another mouthful of cereal. "They have nice voices."

At the opposite end of the table, Chell stared at her untouched bowl of Cheery Owes, reflecting on Emily's innocent observation.

_They do have nice voices,_ she agreed silently to herself. _But_ _they wouldn't sound as sweet if they were firing bullets instead of paintballs._

Those who passed the preliminary ASHPD trials (namely, being able to run and jump while lugging the ten-pound portal gun) underwent further investigation. IQ testing. Endurance exercises. Personality assessments. Mental status examinations. Studies that measured pain tolerance, rate of healing, and psychological resilience.

Somewhere along the way, Chell became test subject 1438. She took their tests, submitted to their endless questionnaires, and generally was a model candidate. Inside, however, she was enraged. She stopped feeling scared, and started getting angry. She found her voice again, but made infrequent use of it, finding that scientists were put off by a test subject who was now truly selectively mute.

"Strong, silent type, eh?" one had mused, flipping through her file.

He pulled out a sheet of paper; on it, Chell saw a bell curve and something handwritten at the bottom.

"'Tenacity greater than the ninety-ninth percentile?'" he read aloud. "Hm. Well, let's try you out anyway. No way to know if you'll sink or swim without tossing you in first."

That one-sided conversation was what tipped Chell's anger into the realm of cold, calculated fury. The company's power-mad technology had killed her father, and now it was taking steps towards destroying her and every other victim in its underground shop of horrors.

Within a couple of days of that interview, she was fitted with her first pair of advanced knee replacements. In true Aperture format, there was no warning – she went to bed that night, and was part cyborg when she woke up the next day.

"Ew," her roommate had said upon awakening. "What's wrong with your legs?"

Chell didn't answer, too busy trying to control the nausea she'd felt at the sight of two curved, metal spines protruding from her body. A testing associate arrived a few minutes later to take her to the Enrichment Center, helping her into the stiff orange jumpsuit as he explained shoes were no longer a necessary article of clothing.

"Why?" Chell demanded angrily.

He blinked in surprise; 1438 wasn't supposed to be able to talk.

"Huh? You mean why you don't need shoes anymore?"

"No," she snapped. "Why do I need the knee replacements?"

"Oh. Uh – it's to protect the portal gun. In case you, um, fall," he stammered. "They're, like…stupid expensive. We don't have a lot of them left."

Chell didn't so much as blink at this response, all-too familiar with Aperture's obsession with the safety of its equipment rather than the livelihood of its users.

"Y-you get cake afterwards," the testing associate sputtered, trying to recover. This wasn't the case at all, but something about the steely gaze of this fourteen-year-old girl left him unnerved.

"Cake?" Chell repeated. Her body had been mutilated and he was trying to make her feel better about it with dessert?

He nodded, hoping the incentive might make her look a little less like she was about to rip out his throat.

Disgusted, she grabbed the portal gun off the table and marched straight into the testing track without a second glance behind her.

Twenty minutes later, she was escorted out of the track, forcibly sedated, and placed into a cryobed. The Enrichment Center had a zero-tolerance policy regarding blatant disregard for its technologies, and 1438's behavior in the chamber couldn't qualify as anything but.

At great risk to herself, Chell had managed to maneuver a pair of sentry turrets so they sat facing each other, and tossed the portal gun in between the ensuing barrage of bullets. The ASHPD was sturdy but stood no chance against hundreds of rounds of ammunition firing at it in two directions.

It was the sort of gutsy, screw-you-and-the-lemons-you-rode-in-on-and-kiss-m y-ass-while-you're-at-it move that would have earned a stamp of approval from Cave Johnson himself, had he been alive to hear about it. But the era of Cave Johnson was over. The era of testing had begun.

* * *

The satisfaction Chell felt upon awakening from her first year-long stint in cryosleep was short-lived. The knee replacements were gone, thank God, but a new horror awaited her when she looked in the mirror for the first time: she was an entire year older.

From Chell's perspective, she'd been asleep for only one night – however, the cryosleep setting for minor-aged guests didn't "pause" the body at the cellular level like it did for adults.

She was returned to Habitat 27, which housed fewer occupants than she remembered. Emily was still there, but Marc was gone, along with AJ and Arsenio and Leve. Ms. Brenda, who'd been an unofficial house mother of sorts for Hab-27, had also disappeared.

Life returned to its usual twisted approximation of normal for a few months. Chell accompanied the others on their daily excursions into the practice testing tracks. She spoke to no one, but her disdain for Aperture was communicated nevertheless, as evidenced in her refusal to answer questions on their informed consent paperwork (an outrageous farce; as if informed consent existed anywhere within fifty miles of the place), or responding to other items in binary when she became especially annoyed.

Her sixteenth birthday arrived, acknowledged with the standard card that read, _The Enrichment Center Celebrates with You in Marking Another Year in Which to Test. _She was fitted with a new pair of knee replacements, and was given a chance to redeem herself in the Enrichment Center, where she sabotaged more equipment and landed herself in cryosleep, again, this time for two years.

However, in the days that elapsed after Chell's second act of not-so-civil disobedience, the situation at Aperture rapidly deteriorated. Everyone, scientists included, began vanishing at an alarming rate, leaving no one to release Chell when her two years were up – every last, woman, and child had all been placed in cryosleep themselves, indefinitely.

All except for one.


	3. THE STALEMATE

CHAPTER THREE:

THE STALEMATE

There was no doubt that as far as bad ideas went, this one had been a disaster. It made sense at the time, of course (then again all of his ideas generally made good sense at the start), but, honestly, how else were they to escape? The lift was the only way out, and the only way to control the lift was to control _Her_. Ergo, plug him into the mainframe, and push the button.

Simple. Tidy. Effective. Then theory was put into practice and it all went to hell.

But, man alive, those first few moments of being in _Her_ body had been brilliant. For the first time in his life, his programming didn't seem quite so directionless, even with the myriad possibilities that were suddenly at his virtual fingertips, begging to be explored and investigated and – important point, this – _improved_ upon.

And it wasn't as though he hadn't been _completely_ unprepared for the experience. He'd done his reading. He knew the drill: Great power, great responsibility; the two went hand-in-hand, or so said Vol…Er. Hmm. Vol-something. Voldermort? Voltage? Volvo?

Well, piddling philosophers aside, _he_ was the core of the hour, and rightfully so, thank you. True, escape had been at the top of his to-do list for quite some time, but as soon as he was connected to _Her_ mainframe, he couldn't remember what was so bloody interesting about the surface anyway. Why not hang around a few minutes longer? They were supposed to be partners, after all, and any self-respecting partner wouldn't have stood by wearing a sour grapes expression as he juggled storage cubes and spoke Spanish – _fluent_ Spanish, mind you, not just the textbook phrases he'd memorized in the oft-chance he ever managed to actually visit South America, wherever that was.

But as the megalomania ebbed, and as his programming and subroutines normalized, Wheatley was finding it increasingly difficult to justify his behavior over the past few hours. He'd been awful on all counts – butchering turrets and storage cubes, throwing temper tantrums, mangling the facility…But worst of all was how he'd treated the woman who was currently sprawled unconscious on the floor in front of him.

He'd never experienced guilt before. The damage he'd sustained made it entirely possible that what his diagnostics were classifying as 'guilt' was in fact nothing more than a bunch of misfiring circuits. After being crushed, attacked by birds, and getting zapped by a cranky nanobot, it was hard to keep track of what was what. But he was pretty sure it was guilt.

For one, that nasty sensation grew worse whenever his optic landed on the sorry sight of his partner. And a sorry sight she was – scrapes, bruises, and burns covered every inch of her, and any remaining skin that wasn't in some state of distress was plastered with half-washed off mobility gel.

Had she looked this terrible before he'd taken control of the facility? How much of this was his fault?

_She looked bloody awful the first time you laid an eye on her,_ he reminded himself. Bleary-eyed and brain damaged, stumbling around, jumping instead of talking. But she didn't look this bad. As if every last bit of spark in her had been permanently snuffed out. Yet even unconscious, she was still maintaining a sturdy grip on his handle, as if daring anyone to come between them.

He raised his pupil, peering over her shoulder to look at the massive chassis that hung looming a few yards away. Its occupant was busy at work, studying the two robots he'd found earlier.

_Stupid cow,_ he thought to himself. _Stupid…cow-y cow._

Almost as if _She_ heard him, _She_ pivoted, and for a moment the scornful yellow optic met his.

Alarmed, Wheatley's pupil shrank to a pinpoint, and he used his free handle to scoot himself a few inches closer to his partner – to protect her, he rationalized. Granted, the method of _how_ to go about this protection business was still up for debate. He was currently drawing a massive blank in the brainstorming department, but still, he was at least trying. Besides, his native programming didn't sport much in the way of Defeating a Mad AI With a Grudge Bigger Than Her Arse, or How To Escape With No Legs While Dragging An Unconscious Human Who Might Also Possibly Be Brain Damaged.

_"Interesting,"_ _She_ remarked, watching him clumsily hop-drag himself nearer to his friend. _"You're not only a moron, you're also a coward. In some circles, that would be considered overachieving."_

Wheatley had a brilliant retort poised on the tip of his vocal modulator, which he promptly forgot when _She_ glided to where he and his partner lay, taking a closer look at the latter.

"Are...are you going to kill us?"

The words were out before he'd realized it, and he hastily tried to recover, babbling, "Sorry! R-rhetorical question, that – sorry, just slipped out. You'll be killing me, not her. Hah, quite clear on that point – crystal. Comprende. Mucho comprende, transmission one hundred percent received…"

The yellow optic focused back on him.

_ "Somehow I really, really doubt that."_

_She_ turned away, going back to the robots. The taller of the two offered him a friendly wave, oblivious to the one hundred and one ways to die that awaited it.

Wheatley forced a weak laugh in reply for appearances' sake, but also because he wanted to put on a brave front. No time like the present to start turning over a new leaf. Or any other variety of foliage. Also, no time like the present to scoot a tiny bit closer to the only thing in the room that afforded him some measure of shielding, i.e., his friend. Go team!

Not much of a team, though, he reflected, taking stock of a particularly nasty-looking scrape on her cheek. Teammates didn't get delusions of grandeur and smash each other into pits. Or go after them with mashy spike plates. Or spinny blade walls.

Wheatley's lid drooped, and he looked down at the floor.

Yeah. This was _definitely_ guilt.

* * *

_"Hallo! What's your name?"_

_ Her voice was stuck. Mired in her throat, like a car in mud. She wanted to go home, where her words flowed freely._

_ "Chell?" came the voice again, as if reading it from something. "Okay! Put 'er there, partner."_

_ She looked up, and then up some more into a cheerful pair of blue eyes. The knot in her throat started to ease the tiniest bit. _

_ "Can I tell you something?" the voice asked, its eyes crinkling with eagerness over what it wanted to share._

_ She nodded. The voice continued to speak excitedly, but she noticed something was happening to the eyes – their blueness intensified to a brilliant turquoise, and slowly merged until there was nothing remotely human about them anymore. She was staring up at a single blue orb. It was swinging around, attached to something suspended high above, and still talking._

_ "This body is amazing, seriously! I can't get over how small you are!"_

_ Chell looked down, somehow not surprised to find she had re-inhabited the body of her five-year-old self. A construction paper name tag with 'CHELL' written on it hung around her neck._

_ She took it in hand, studying it, realizing too late that the tone of the orb's voice had changed. Mere seconds ago the voice had been friendly, but now she heard nothing but malice in its words, and so she kept her eyes glued to the floor in hopes it would leave her alone._

_ It didn't._

_ "You know what you are?" it asked her, leaning down close. "Selfish. I've done nothing but sacrifice to get us here! What have you sacrificed? NOTHING. Zero. All you've done is boss me around. Well, now who's the boss? Who's the boss? It's me."_

_ She was in danger, she realized. Instinctively she tried to call out for her dad, but the knot in her throat was tightening once more, squeezing her vocal cords together until she couldn't breathe. In her head she began screaming for help, knowing all the while that no one can hear a voice that is silent._

* * *

Woozy and exhausted, Chell awoke from the dream and opened her eyes, feeling a surge of adrenaline when she saw two robots peering back at her. They seemed to pose no threat, merely curiosity, and her attention soon zeroed in on the enormous robot suspended behind the pair, who was watching her with a single golden optic.

_ "Oh…thank God you're all right,"_ _She_ said as Chell struggled to her feet. _"You know, being Caroline taught me a valuable lesson…"_

Chell listened, keeping half-an ear on what _She_ was saying, which sounded second cousin to a confession. She was busy taking stock of her surroundings, trying to assess how long she'd been unconscious. The chamber had changed – the hole in the ceiling had been repaired, or transferred, or taunted back into existence or God knows what else. Something had placed her into a lift. Her portal gun was gone, but she saw another in the hands of the orange-eyed robot, which was hefting it curiously as if it had been given a new toy.

_ "You know what my days used to be like? I just tested. Nobody murdered me…"_

Wheatley. Where was Wheatley?

Still only half-listening, Chell spotted him in the corner, tossed aside like garbage. He was watching her; his optic widened and then shrank, darting in the opposite direction when he realized she had seen him.

_ "…You dangerous, mute lunatic. So you know what? You win. Just go."_

The lift started to rise.

_ "It's been fun. Don't come back."_

_ She's…letting me go? Just like that?_ Chell froze, waiting for the catch – for a sentry turret to appear out of nowhere, firing, or for the lift to give way, or lead her up into room filled with flames.

As the lift continued to rise, something ignited in her chest, an unfamiliar, dangerous sensation. Images began flashing through her head, thoughts and dreams that she never permitted herself to entertain, because of all the endless variety of deadly things that lurked in the testing tracks, the most fatal element was hope.

_She_ focused her gaze elsewhere, uninterested, and the tiny spark in Chell's heart flickered and grew.

What would the surface look like? How would it feel to have the luxury of lying on the ground and staring up at the sky? To feel the sun on her face, and not the mocking sunshine that emanated from the hard-light bridges? To smell fresh air, and take a long, luxurious breath that was untainted by the scents of metal and sulfur and conversion gel?

Then her eyes fell back on the lone identity core in the corner. He peeked at her, then once again ducked his focus away. The sunshine-tinted images in her mind fled back into the tightly-locked box in her heart, and her eyes narrowed.

She was angry at him. She was _beyond_ angry. On Chell's personal bar of all things pissed, Wheatley wasn't just at the top, he was through the roof, into the stratosphere and in a category by himself with hoard of mashy spike plates aimed straight for him.

Chell was, in fact, so angry that for a moment she even contemplated the possibility of saving him just to enjoy the feeling of abandoning him later. But to do that would make her no better – would make her just as inhuman – as _Her_. And that wasn't an option.

So she did the unthinkable.

She jumped out of the lift.

_ "Wh-wh-what are you – what are you doing?"_

Chell hit the ground at a run and tackled the orange-eyed robot, who was too surprised to do anything but squawk as she wrested the portal gun away from it. ASHPD acquired, she swerved around the blue-eyed robot, grabbed Wheatley, and continued to sprint.

Panels lifted, blocking the way; still running, Chell lobbed Wheatley into the air, caught one handle over her arm, and hefted the portal gun in both hands, all in one swift movement.

_ "It's a beautiful day outside. It's too nice to stay indoors and risk your life for a tumor."_

She fired twice, once at the floor and then at the ceiling beyond, dropping through the portal, hitting the floor and then running some more, heading in the direction that her instincts indicated was 'away.'

"Left!" Wheatley hollered. "Go left! I know where we are!"

Chell did as instructed, dodging panel after panel. It didn't take her long to realize where he was directing her: his lair, or rather, what remained of it.

After being transferred back into the mainframe, _She_ had wasted no time in repairing the damage to the central chamber, restoring it to its former condition. However, part of Wheatley's lair had been left intact, a memorial of sorts, complete with _RIP, Moron_ spelled out in large, blocky letters on the back wall.

Typical.

But this was one instance in which their opponent's hubris was going to come in very, very handy. Because amidst the scattered debris was the pit Wheatley had never gotten around to repairing – the one he'd punched into the ground during his tantrum – the one that was a miles-deep fall back into the bowels of Aperture.

…The one place Chell knew was out of _Her_ purview.

_ "By the way. Your freedom was a one-time offer. I thought you'd like to know."_

Chell ran straight for the pit, closed her eyes, and jumped.


	4. THE PROBATION

_AN: To those of you who have reviewed or followed this story - you have my sincerest thanks and gratitude. Really. I do the Kermit "YAAAAAY" dance every time it happens. You're awesome. Anyway, happy reading! -wrathkitty_

* * *

CHAPTER FOUR:

THE PROBATION

It was exactly like last time: dark, cold, and with an unwelcome, chatty sidekick.

_"AUUUGGH! _I just looked down – don't look down! Or drop me! And land with your legs – if you can – please if you can, land with your legs. But not in that order – don't drop me, land with your legs, and don't look down. _AHH!_ Sorry, sorry, I've done it again! Hard not to, though, 'down' being the default direction…"

Chell ignored Wheatley, trying to gauge the number of seconds they'd been falling and how much longer they had to go.

"Also, while we're here – can I just say how sor –"

She punched him with the portal gun, straight in the optic.

_"OW!_ I deserve it! I deserve it, I admit it! I was monstrous back there, and bossy – and I _am_ sorry –"

Chell punched him a second time, harder now. She didn't want to hear his apologies. If he hadn't gone power-mad in the first place, they'd already be on the surface and away from this accursed place. But instead, because of some God-forsaken sense of obligation that she couldn't even explain, she was still here, right back where she'd been only hours before.

_"OW!_ I'm sorry, I'm sorry – I was awful! I was more than awful, I was as bad as _Her_ – but I couldn't _help_ it. That itch – it's all you can think about…"

The scent of the air had changed, she noticed. It was growing mustier – damp, tinged with mold. How much more time until they reached the bottom? Thirty seconds? Twenty seconds?

Chell readjusted her hold on Wheatley and the portal gun, bracing herself for impact. Amazingly, he was still talking, now telling her about the bird.

"— and they hatched! Can you believe _OH GOD, WE'RE GOING TO HIT THE GROUND, GRAB ME, GRAB ME –"_

* * *

_"…It's my first day, too. New job. And if I'm honest, I wasn't too keen on it – I mean, new people, new names, massive inconvenience all around, and then I got in here, saw these loads of kids – madness! But there's books here! And…and toys! Loads of toys! There's even a toy pony farm back there..."_

Still caught in the dream, Chell shook her head, trying to clear away the voice in her ears. What had happened? Every part of her body hurt, not surprising given that she seemed to be lying on an assortment of sharp-edged rubble.

"Hello? Are you awake? Just nod your head, if you are – and, and if you're not, then…um…don't nod your head. Just…keep lying there. Doing a good job, with that. Good jumper, makes sense you're a good lie-er. But, um, maybe nod your head, if you could. Instead of all the lying."

There was a worried pause.

_"Oh! _Not lying-lying! Ha, sorry, no – I don't mean you're good at _lying_ – telling falsehoods, anything like that. Or, maybe you are! Maybe you're a great liar! Bet you lie all the time, in your head. But, what I meant was _lying_ as in _lying down_. On the ground."

Wishing she could've stayed unconscious for a little longer, Chell cracked open an eye, feeling an immediate dearth of enthusiasm upon the sight that greeted her: Wheatley, resting on her stomach and staring manically back at her.

"Heyyy, partner!" he effused, seeing that she was indeed awake. "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind – er, womankind." Not waiting for her to reply, he continued, saying, "That was amazing! I landed right on you! Didn't get a scratch on me! Well, no new ones, anyway, haha!"

His cheery blue optic met her gaze and made a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree loop of delight. When she said nothing, the blue shrank slightly and went cock-eyed.

"Umm…oh. Oh God. The brain damage. It's worse, isn't it?"

Stifling a moan, Chell turned onto her side, unceremoniously dumping Wheatley to the ground. He rolled a few feet and then swiveled in his case, righting himself in a shower of sparks.

"Are – are you okay?" he asked anxiously, tilting to look up at her. "Your elbow's leaking. _Oh!_ Blood! Of course! I _heard_ about that, back when I worked in the Relaxation Center. Ha, sometimes the 'guests' – guests, they used to call them, what a joke – they'd start _gushing_ the stuff! Something to do with low platelet counts and fatal bedsores."

Chell inspected her elbow, which had been skinned in the fall. Satisfied that this was the only notable injury she'd incurred, she eased onto her hands and knees and started hunting for the portal gun.

Wheatley failed to grasp why she was opting to crawl around on the ground rather than getting up and walking, and for a moment began to wonder if, in addition to leaking fluid, she had also been paralyzed. Then his logic board kicked into gear, reminding him that his partner's ability to crawl was a reasonably good indicator that she was, in fact, _not_ paralyzed. His secondary logic board piped up a moment later, putting forth the alternate suggestion that, barring paralysis and other forms of neurological injury, perhaps she had simply forgotten how to walk.

"So what's the – _zzzt_— " There was a crackle of static; Wheatley's voice broke, then picked up again. "—Plan? Where to from here? Up, obviously," he added, answering his own question. "But then what?"

Chell ignored him, still looking for the ASHPD.

"Hello? Are – are you listening? No…no, you're not listening, are you," he mused, slipping back into his habitual role of narrator. "You're scanning the ground, you're…you're looking for something!"

When another few seconds ticked by with no indication she'd heard him, Wheatley stopped feeling quite so giddy about their progress thus far.

"Are – oh, bloody hell. You haven't gone deaf, too, have you? You know, other than jumping and pushing buttons, humans don't seem to be good for much of anything, really. Heads like _melons_ – one little crack and all your systems go offline. Not a very sturdy design, if you ask me."

Then, realizing he might have offended her (as well as not realizing that if she _were_ deaf that words were pointless), Wheatley sputtered, "But we – we can work with that! Deaf and dumb, not a problem! Just – uh, give me a moment, I'll think of something! There's a solution, I just have to come up with it. You're not in a hurry, are you?"

Chell made no acknowledgement of his query, preferring to indulge in the tempting mental image of taking his core apart, locating the wire that powered his vocal processor, and cutting through it with a satisfying _snip._

"Okay, let's see," Wheatley continued, thinking out loud. "How to communicate with a brain damaged, deaf human. Can't be too hard a problem to solve. Shouldn't be hard at all. Hmmm…Semaphore? No…you can't carry the portal gun as well as a flag. What else, what else. Braille? _Braille!_ Of course! Oh. Wait. No, that won't work, either…"

Chell looked down at the metal panel she was attempting to move and wondered if banging her head on it might make her feel better.

"Morse code!" he exclaimed suddenly, almost scorching her with his resultant cascade of sparks. "I've got Morse code translation software in here! Won't take a second to load it up…Just have to find the right directory…"

Curious in spite of herself, Chell glanced up, only to avert her eyes when Wheatley's optic went off in a mad pattern of flashes and bursts.

"-.- - ..- .- .-. . ..- ... .. -. -. - ... .. ... - .-. .- -. ... .-.. .- - .. - -. ... - ..-. - .- .- .-. . .. -. -.-. - .-. .-. . -.-. - .-.. -.- .-. .-.. . .- ... . -.-. - -. ... ..- .-.. - - ... . - .- -. ..- .- .-.. .-.-.- !"

He waited eagerly for some sign of understanding on her part, but she was doing that thing where she stared at him for a second or two before shaking her head and looking away.

"Hmm. Okay, Morse code's a no-go. Not a problem, not a problem! Hunh, too bad I couldn't just hack your brain and fix whatever's wrong. But, as I said, not a problem. I'll think of something –"

Chell snapped her fingers to get his attention; Wheatley looked at her and she pointed to her ear.

"And…you're pointing. To your ear."

She nodded, waiting patiently for the hamster wheel to start turning.

It took a second or two, but then Wheatley's optic bugged out in amazement, and he exclaimed, "You _heard_ me! You're not deaf! Brilliant!"

Satisfied that the message had been received, Chell resumed her search.

Over the next ten minutes, Wheatley guessed that she was looking for the exit, an apple, her old pair of advanced knee replacements, neurotoxin, and, oddly enough, her car keys ("No? Not your car keys? Hmm…thought I'd had it there. Humans are always losing their keys. Keys to what, though, that's the question. Oh! Your _car! _Are you looking for your car? No, you don't have a car, do you? Bloody keys…").

"The portal device? That's what you were looking for?" he exclaimed when Chell finally located it under a pile of mangled rebar. "Why didn't you say so before?"

She was about to get to her feet when a red flash on Wheatley's chassis caught her eye. Still on her hands and knees, she crawled over to take a closer look, surprised to discover that the three dots on his casing were actually a trio of LEDs, two of which were blinking.

Frowning, she reached out and put her fingers to the group of lights, pointer, middle, and then ring finger. He looked down, following her motion and said, "Oh! My indicator lights!"

Chell raised an eyebrow, concerned, and held up two fingers.

His optic opened to its widest, and he nodded happily, giving her his lower-lidded version of a cheery smile.

"Peace!" he agreed, misinterpreting what she was trying to tell him. "Interesting! I didn't think you'd be one for all that hippie stuff! Peace…love…tranquility –"

She shook her head, touched his indicator lights a second time, and held up two fingers again.

Wheatley's optic widened in comprehension. "Oh! You mean two of the lights are on?"

She nodded.

The blue pupil shrank in surprise, and then looked right, then left. Something was amiss, Chell realized, and not for the first time she marveled how nothing more than a sphere with a light inside could appear so vividly human.

"Um…I-I _might_ need to run a couple of tests," he stammered, "but…um – ha, I can't do it with you watching. Seriously. Sorry. I know, doesn't make sense, everything we've been through, but – well, I can't." He gave another nervous laugh and requested, "Could – could you turn around? It won't be more than a second. Just a quick diagnostic."

Rolling her eyes, Chell huffed and turned her back on him, still crouched on the ground.

"Hm…shouldn't be too hard to solve," she heard Wheatley murmuring. "Right…'Ello, there, diagnostics! Good to see you. Been awhile, I know, but better late than never. Ah. Yes. Here we go. Yes, _yes,_ run the algorithm, of course – and, there we are, damage summary, let's see…Oh. Makes…sense. Bloody obvious, really."

Nothing in his words gave much cause for alarm, but the heaviness that entered his voice was worrisome. Even in full megalomaniac mode, Wheatley had always remained perpetually upbeat, and this was the first time Chell could ever recall him sounding glum.

She peeked over her shoulder, surprised to see him looking dejectedly downward, his top handle drooping. If he'd been in possession of feet, she was certain he would have been scuffing one shoe on the ground.

"We've all got internal batteries," he was explaining to the dirt. "Personality cores, I mean. And – " Wheatley's optic swiveled up to look at her, and he continued, "we last for _centuries!_ We're _designed_ to! One-point-one volts is all you need, so long as you, um, don't go plugging yourself into you-know-who's mainframe for lengthy periods of time, and then you might as well just use an electric chair to power a nightlight."

His optic drooped downwards again, and he said in a rush, "Look, I don't want to go into it – it's probably over your head anyway, with the brain damage and all – but my power supply is, um – well, _fried_ would be a _bit_ of an exaggeration, but –"

As Wheatley continued to babble, Chell knelt beside him, undergoing some heated internal debate. Deciding that cheating was probably warranted, and she leaned forward and traced the words, _"How do we re-charge you?"_ in the dusty ground.

This direct attempt at communication startled Wheatley, who stopped talking long enough to read her question.

"Well, a stick on the wall, obviously," he answered. "But there don't seem to be too many of them around here. Plenty of wreckage, but not too many sticks on the wall."

Chell took a deep breath and rose to her feet, trying to remember every detail of Test Shaft 09. Surely there was a stick on the wall – to use Wheatley's terms – somewhere within the underground facility that they could find and use to re-power him.

"Um...There _is_ a quick fix," she heard him say. "But I'm not crazy about it, though, honestly. At all."

When he didn't continue, she glanced down at him, waiting for him to finish.

He peered up at her. "You could always put me in a potato battery."

* * *

The jacket to Chell's jumpsuit contained Velcro loops on each shoulder, intended for use by the robotic system that dressed test subjects in preparation for the Enrichment Center. After a couple of failed attempts, she managed to rig up a harness that enabled her to carry Wheatley on her back, and started out for the Abandonment Hatch.

He disliked the new traveling arrangement, preferring the smoother ride of the zero-point energy field manipulator on the ASHPD. However, he conceded to its necessity after accompanying Chell through a couple of high-velocity portals. The ASHPD couldn't fire and grip objects at the same time, and given a choice between being left behind or dealing with the bumpy, backwards-facing ride on a pair of human shoulders, he preferred the latter.

As they made their way into Test Shaft 09, Wheatley kept up his usual friendly narration, remarking about everything from Cave Johnson's recordings, to proffering opinions about old Aperture's archaic technologies ("Look at this place! Not a management rail in sight! Like a bloody archaeological dig. Fewer skeletons, of course").

Chell didn't object to the running commentary – much. Perhaps that's what had put the added sting into Wheatley's betrayal, she mused. 'Yes' and 'apple' were all he'd ever asked her to say, and when she didn't, there was no more badgering. No endless questions about why she didn't talk, or long, deliberate pauses that were intended to render her so uncomfortable that she felt obligated to fill the silence.

Instead, he'd taken up the slack and talked for them both. After her first stint through the Enrichment Center, along with nothing but _Her_ voice for company, Chell found Wheatley's endless stream of conversation somewhat off-putting. But she'd quickly decided that if she had to be back in this God-forsaken place, she preferred the aid of a partner, even it was one who didn't ever shut up. At least, that's how she felt until the little twit up and went off on a god complex and tried to murder her.

To his credit, though, Wheatley's affable nature had returned almost the instant he was disconnected from _Her_ mainframe. Similarly, _She_ started showing signs of a moral compass during _Her_ tenure in a potato. The programming within the Central AI Chamber was of a toxic nature, that much was obvious.

In fact, the longer she thought about it, the more Chell was forced to admit that what happened hadn't been Wheatley's fault, really. He wasn't the brightest sphere in the bunch, but he wasn't a moron, either, and Chell could sympathize with the vulnerabilities that accompany an inferiority complex.

She felt the same way, as a little girl – that her entire self-worth hinged on her ability to converse with others. She was smart, but she wasn't the star of the class, and she was a fast runner, but she never came first in any races at school. Her inability to talk was the only thing that made her stand out, and also happened to be the aspect she hated most about herself – not unlike Wheatley, who had been programmed to be an idiot, and then failed so spectacularly at his sole purpose that he'd been shafted off to other departments until he was eventually forgotten.

It was a cruel twist – to have the one thing you're not good at be the only thing that sets you apart.

"Are you all right?" Wheatley called from behind her, pulling Chell out of her thoughts. They were traversing a catwalk, and he'd been telling her all about his brief stint on the nanobot work crew.

She halted mid-step, and took a moment to look down into the toxic sludge below, staring at the murky lake of acid until her vision blurred.

That's why she'd saved him, she realized. Cliché or none, she and Wheatley were kindred spirits of some kind.

"Still – _zzzt_ – there?" he queried when she didn't respond. In addition to the sparks, his speech was now also afflicted with intermittent bursts of static.

Chell nodded.

Wheatley had quickly learned to differentiate between the shoulder movements that indicated a nod for 'yes' and a shake of the head for 'no,' and he said, "Oh, good. Glad you're there."

She tore her gaze away from the lake, readjusted Wheatley more securely on her back, and continued walking.

* * *

Had Chell ever bothered to respond to Wheatley's original question regarding the plan for their escape, her answer would have been simple: Find another way out. Aperture was too large of a facility for there to only be one route to the surface.

Initially, she tried to avoid familiar terrain, but after their fourth encounter with a broken catwalk, she re-traced her steps and returned to the Abandonment Hatch. Along the way she banged on every door, fired portals on every surface imaginable, and entertained every suggestion Wheatley put forward, no matter how inane.

But as the hours passed, and Wheatley continued to buzz and spark with increasing frequency (as evidenced by the singed end of Chell's ponytail), the only destination they seemed to be headed for was dead end after dead end. To add insult to injury, they hadn't found a single power port.

Growing desperate, she decided to go back to Pump Station Beta, wondering if she had overlooked something. It took some time, but eventually she found her way to the main lift and portaled over to the office, which contained a hidden corridor that led to the dry dock.

"Oh, this is clever!" Wheatley exclaimed as Chell ducked through the concealed entryway. He was about to inquire where the secret passage led when a recording began to play, distracting him.

_"We're working on a little teleportation experiment. Now, this doesn't work with all skin types…"_

"Does he _ever_ stop talking?" Wheatley complained. "Honestly, you can't walk two steps without him wittering on about gasoline or asbestos or other – _zzzzt_ – disclaimers. This place is a lawsuit waiting to happen, seriously. Speaking of, how's your breathing? You're not coughing up blood, are you?"

Chell was too busy inspecting the vitrified test chamber doors to respond. After giving them a cursory onceover, she turned and walked through the entryway leading to the dry dock.

The chamber was massive, and no doubt once contained something incredible. Exactly what this might have been Chell didn't concern herself with, but Wheatley's curiosity was piqued, and he looked around with interest.

"'Borealis,'" he said in wonderment, reading this name off of the orange life preserver that stood against the far wall. "Hm. Odd sort of place for a ship, don't you think?"

Only half-listening, Chell walked across the metal platform and approached the gate blocking the stairway to the lower level. She put her hand out and gave the gate a hard shove; like last time, it didn't budge, but unlike last time, she decided to work around the problem instead of leaving and finding someplace else to explore.

She went back and set Wheatley down by the life preserver, and then began unstrapping her long-fall boots. What she was about to attempt required maximum freedom of movement, particularly for her feet.

"What – _zzzzt_ – are you doing?" he asked, sounding apprehensive. "I mean, I can _see_ what you're doing, but _why_ are you doing it?"

Chell stepped out of the boots, relishing the sensation of walking normally. When was the last time she'd been able to walk flat-footed?

"I've got an idea," Wheatley called after her as she walked back to the gate. "But – um, but you need to come – _zzzzt_ – back here and pick me up before I can tell it to you. So, why don't you just turn around and come back. Just come on back, right over here, and pick me up and I'll tell you my idea."

Chell just gave him a half-smile and knelt down, pushing the portal gun beneath the gate; she'd collect it when she made it to the other side.

"Wait – what – are you going to try to _climb down?" _Wheatley hollered, realizing what she was about to do. "Without your leg braces? Are you _mad?_ What happens if you fall?!_"_

She was already climbing under the rail.

Wheatley watched in horror as his partner precariously balanced herself on the opposite side of the railing, holding onto it with one arm, and leaned out over a fifteen-foot drop with her other arm outstretched. Just when he was convinced all was lost, she grasped the railing on the steps and nimbly hopped across, circumventing the barrier.

He heaved a sigh of relief the moment her feet were on solid ground – er, stair. Honestly, the woman was crazy. _She_ was a proper maniac, but his partner was something else entirely. Zero judgment whatsoever, knocking about and dangling from railings without any long-fall boots! No forethought, either – after all, if she fell and cracked her melon head, where did that leave him? By himself, stuck with no one to talk to but a life preserver, that's where. And they called _him_ a moron.

Disgusted, Wheatley scowled (as best he could), and hunkered down to wait until she came back. _If_ she came back, assuming she did not encounter a blunt object to the brain, which, considering her track record so far, was not out of the question, and (now that he thought about it) was probably a likely possibility.

"Bloody humans," he muttered.

* * *

Chell felt almost upbeat as she ventured into the dry dock. For the first time since saving Wheatley, she was making actual progress instead of just going in circles.

However, she had walked only a few meters when she began to realize this was a fool's errand – a vitrified fool's errand. Her first clue was the sensation of the ground beneath her feet; the floor was constructed of rough metal plates, but they were glassy-smooth to the touch, and cold as ice.

Confused – the platform where she'd left Wheatley certainly wasn't vitrified – Chell took a closer look at one of the life preservers that lay on the ground. It, too, possessed that same icy, glass-like quality, and didn't budge when she attempted to pick it up.

She looked back up and scanned the empty dry dock, trying to spot another door that (like the entrance they'd come through) had been blasted open, but every other possible exit was sealed. She began firing portals at random but to no avail. The entire room was nothing more than a dead end. _Another_ dead end.

Chell stormed back up the steps and inelegantly squirmed her way under the rails and back onto the platform. Wheatley was too delighted by her return to notice her frustrated glower.

"You're back!" he said as she came over and sat on ground beside him. "And, you didn't fall! Tremendous! Ha, knew you could – _zzzzt_ – do it."

Chell could tell Wheatley was waiting for some kind of response on her part, but she just sat there, brooding.

He tried again. "Find anything?"

Still showing no sign that she'd heard him, Chell grabbed one of the long-fall boots and started yanking it on, only to stop mid-way and stare off into space.

_Now what?_ she wondered. Where should they go from here? Back to the Abandonment Hatch – _again_ – and try another route, or continue on to Enrichment Sphere 04?

"Oi!" Wheatley bellowed, startling her. "Anyone home in there? Hello?"

Chell glared at him in annoyance, but forgot her irritation when she noticed his indicator lights. All three were flashing in quick succession instead of just the two, and now that she'd thought to stop and check, his optic also seemed dimmer than usual.

She held up three fingers to Wheatley, who nodded in his case. "Yeah," he said simply. "I know."

He attempted a lower-lidded smile, but she couldn't return it. Time was running out, and they both knew it.

Chell finished strapping on the long-fall boots, and sat back against the wall with a sigh, trying to release some of her frustration. Getting angry about the situation wasn't going to solve a thing.

_I'm tired. I'm tired and I'm hungry,_ she thought dully.

"Are you okay?" Wheatley asked. "Might be time for a lie-down."

She placed her hand on top of his case in absent acknowledgement. A rest wouldn't be such a bad idea. She could shut her eyes for a little while, and then continue looking for a power port. There _had_ to be one around here.

Coming to a decision, Chell freed her other hand from the ASPHD, resting the device in her lap, and reached for the orange life preserver propped up against the wall. It might make a half-decent pillow, she figured.

The instant Chell made contact with the life preserver, the world around her and Wheatley snapped out of existence. Both remained fully alert, but the experience of having their surroundings vanish and change in less than a heartbeat was so disorienting that even Wheatley was stunned into momentary silence.

The dry dock was gone, replaced by what looked to be a run-down, dilapidated lobby. A doorway stood across from them, and off to the left was a waiting area containing a desk and several mismatched plastic chairs.

Wheatley flipped over in his case to look up at his partner, who was wide-eyed and staring.

"Um, don't want to alarm you," he began, putting a laugh into his voice even though he was clearly panicked. "Although, as I've said before, alarm is a perfectly normal feeling, so – think positive! But we seem to have, um…actually, I have no explanation for what just happened, but I think given the circumstances that it's not – _zzzzzt_ – unreasonable to assume that it's bad. Good news, though – always nice to have good news – I _do_ think we are _still_ in the facility. Uh, hello? Are you listening?"

When she gave no response, Wheatley huffed in frustration; really, some days the woman was about as dumb as a crap turret.

Chell _was _listening, but was also trying to recall the recordings that she'd heard earlier while exploring the vitrified test chamber doors. She hadn't paid them much attention, as they all seemed to concern a variety of ridiculous side effects that involved coal or peanuts or teleportation –

Wait.

_ "Alright, we're working on a little teleportation experiment. Now this doesn't work with all skin types, so try to remember which skin is yours, and if it doesn't teleport along with you we'll do what we can to sew you right back into it."_

Chell heard the words echo in her memory, feeling torn between accepting the utter absurdity of the truth, and wanting to remain convinced that there was another explanation rooted in a modicum of common sense. However, given some of Mr. Johnson's other batty schemes, teleportation seemed almost mundane.

Well, no sense in dithering about the whys and hows when there was somewhere new to investigate. She gathered up Wheatley and his harness in one hand, the ASHPD in the other, and rose to her feet.

"'Corrupted Personality Relaxation Annex,'" he read aloud, taking notice of the sign posted above the door. "Hmm…Sounds ominous. Let's not go in."

Chell approached the door anyway, but halted when Wheatley continued his sales pitch, saying, "If you ask me – and you haven't, true, but this _is_ a democracy – of some kind, anyway. So, if you asked me, my vote is to – _zzzzt_ – _not_ go in! Let's find a different way out! Bad idea, going through that door aaaaaannnnd never mind, you're still walking forward. Okay. So, looks like we're – _zzzt_ – going in. No vote for Wheatley."

Chell gave his harness a gentle swing, teasing him, and broke out into a grin when she heard him mutter, "You know what you need to read? Machiavelli. Might be too much for you, with all the – _zzzt_ – brain damage, of course, but if you ever recover, you should definitely read it. Because this is _not_ a democracy."

She just rolled her eyes and proceeded through the door. As soon as she crossed the threshold, another audio recording began to play, echoing throughout the dimly-lit room.

_ "Hello, intrepid explorer!"_ came the familiar brash voice._ "If you're hearing this, then that means you've stumbled on to a part of Aperture that no living eyes were meant to see! So get out. Now. Yeah, you. Door. Four-sided thing with an 'EXIT' sign above it – assuming you can read, which you probably can't, and if that's the case, then there's a great big pile of beard dirt waiting for you back through that door. Try not to smear it all in one place."_

Just as the recording finished, a panel in the ceiling opened with a stilted, jerky movement, and something that once aspired to be a rifle descended to Chell's eye-level.

There was a click, followed by Wheatley yelling, _"AAAAUGH! DUCK! RUN!" _

Optic squeezed shut, he continued to shout, unaware that Chell had long since ducked, and not that it mattered anyway, because, per the note taped to the rifle-shaped device aiming at them, it had been cannibalized for parts decades earlier by someone named Gordon and posed no threat to anyone except excitable personality cores.

"Are we – _zzzt_ – dead?" Wheatley cried when she stood up again. "Are you dead? Jump to let me know you're not dead."

Annoyed that he didn't have enough sense to open his optic and check for himself, she bumped him with her knee. Wheatley's lids snapped apart, and he made a loop of relief.

"Oh, well done!" he said. "We're not dead. And – hm," he continued, scanning the note. "Who's Gordon?"

Chell didn't know the answer to his question, or any of the other questions that were coming to mind as she took in the scenery. The room they'd entered was filled with dozens of large tanks, similar to the ones used in the relaxation vaults.

"Are – are those cryobeds?" Wheatley exclaimed.

They certainly appeared to be, although they were unlike any she had ever encountered. There were about thirty altogether, some containing humans who were perfectly preserved in active cryosleep, and others who had long since expired. Each bed was filled with purplish, transparent fluid, and connected to a central array of tubes and cables that dangled from the ceiling. At the foot of every bed was a monitor, along with what looked to be some type of identification number – and a power port.

"We never had _anything_ like this at the – _zzzt_ – Relaxation Center," Wheatley said, sounding affronted. "Look! All of these units have their own back-up power supply – I could've kept _everyone_ alive if we had this sort of equipment! I mean, these are designed for deep storage – _really_ long-term stays. Honestly, why'd they give us all those – _zzzzzzt_ – bloody cryo-chambers when they had _these_ lying around? It's – _zzzt_ – pointless!"

Steeling herself, Chell began to explore. Monitors flickered to life at her approach, brightening the room, and she stopped to read the text scrolling across one of the screens.

_NAME/ - KEVIN A -_

_OCCUPATION/ - ASTROPHYSICS INTERN -_

_CORRUPTION LEVEL/ - ERROR; OUT OF RANGE -_

_COGNITIVE FUNCTION/ - ERROR; OUT OF RANGE -_

Other miscellaneous information was also displayed, including the occupant's height, weight, and date of storage.

What was this place? Chell wondered. Who were all of these people?

"Weird," was all Wheatley had to say on the matter. "Hey! Look! There's a stick on the wall down there! Why don't you – _zzzzt_ – plug me in?"

Chell warily studied the power port on the cryobed, which was outlined in a glowing yellow strip. They had no way of knowing if this portion of the facility was under _Her_ control. Would _She_ find them the instant Wheatley was connected?

Not knowing how to go about pantomiming her concerns, Chell pointed to the yellow outline surrounding the port, hoping he'd make the association between the color and _Her._

"Yeah!" he said encouragingly. "I know! It's a stick on the – _zzzt_ – wall! Go on, plug me in. Just like last time, remember? Did a great job, last time – you're getting to be an expert at it. C'mon, plug me in. Won't hurt a bit, I promise."

She shook her head and pointed to the port again, more urgently this time.

Wheatley looked at the port, and then back at her. "Umm…I spy with my little eye, something that starts with a…a 'p!' For plug! Ha, got it, first try. Go on! Plug me in!"

Giving it up as a bad job, Chell just went over to the next bed, hoping this might distract him. Her tactic worked, and Wheatley began reading aloud the information on the monitor, for some reason assuming that she was illiterate as well as mute.

"'Percy W,'" he began. "Hunh. Bet he was a know-it-all, with a name like that. 'Percy.' About as bad as 'Eustace.' Anyway, sorry, getting off – _zzzt_ – topic – okay, what else…Previously employed as an actuary – ha, now the name _really_ fits. Corruption level and cognitive function – hmm, it says same thing as the other one back there – out of range. Wonder what that could mean."

Chell's gaze wandered from the monitor and down to the bed's power port, which was outlined in a glowing perimeter of pink. Finding this odd, she glanced over at the adjacent cryobed; its port was bordered in blue light. Were the beds color-coded?

"Ooh, this bloke's interesting," she heard Wheatley say. He'd taken notice of the person in the blue cryobed, and she walked over so they could get a closer look.

"Name…redacted," he said, reading from the monitor. "Occupation…also redacted. Huh, this thing's not very – _zzzzzt_ - informative at all. What else, what else…corruption level is – forty-nine percent! That's not so bad! I mean, all things considered. And, _hey_, this is interesting – this guy's cognitive function is active! Think he's awake?"

Chell peered through the grimy lid of the cryobed; its occupant's face was half-concealed by the cloudy suspension fluid, but his eyes were most definitely closed.

"I quite – _zzzzt_ – like the look of him," Wheatley said brightly. "He's tall."

Per the monitor, the man in question was more than tall; he was an astonishing six-foot-seven. Chell pointed this out, but the pitfalls that accompany excessive stature were lost on Wheatley.

"That's the _point_, innit?" he argued. "He'd be taller than _everybody!_ Look, if _I_ had to be a smelly human – and thank God I don't…er. Um…sorry, no offense. But, but if I _did_ have to be a smelly human – which, as I said earlier, I don't – _zzzt_ – but I'm sure I'd love it if I was – y'know, with, with your…ummm…folklore and everything. Anyway – _zzzzzt_ – what I'm saying is, I'd want to be a smelly human who's tall. Besides, I like the look of him. He's a man who – who – who gets things done! A doer…a doer of things…complicated things. _Brainy_ things. And that's another point – big bloke, must mean a big brain! What's not to – _zzzzt_ – like? Bloody tall, _and_ smart!"

Chell took another look at the man in the cryobed. He didn't look like much of a doer, in her opinion. He looked like an overgrown scarecrow.

Before she could respond, Wheatley erupted in a blast of sparks, his worst episode yet, scorching Chell's hands and arms.

"Sorry," he panted. "I – _zzzzt_ – look, just pop me onto the stick down there. I'll charge – _zzzzzzzt_ – back up and then – _zzzt_ – we can –"

The hell with it, Chell decided. If _She_ found them, then they'd just deal with the fallout when it happened.

Working fast, she untangled Wheatley from the makeshift harness and knelt down, plugging him into the port. Instantly, his optic's brightness intensified, and all three indicator lights stopped blinking.

"Thanks!" He made a quick spin in the port, saying, "Man alive, that's better. Wow. You don't really know how bad you feel until – uh, until you stop feeling bad anymore, I suppose. Hey, why don't you have a lie-down as well? It'll take some time for me to get back to full power."

Chell considered his suggestion. She was exhausted, and it would be a while before they could go anywhere…

Figuring Wheatley was right, Chell sat beside him, resting her back against the cryobed, and closed her eyes. She was asleep less than a minute later.

* * *

Chell's dreams were vivid, a series of disjointed recollections about her first week of school at C. Johnson Elementary. Random, insignificant details flooded her brain – sitting with the other children on the carpet listening to a story called Rainbow Cake, building towers at recess with the toy Companion Cube blocks – but something within those memories kept eluding her, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't pinpoint the missing element.

The sound of draining fluid cut through Chell's subconscious, and she awoke with a start, taking a wild look around. They were still in the Corrupted Personality Relaxation Annex, and nothing seemed to be leaking or otherwise amiss. Her relief was short-lived, however, when she turned to check on Wheatley. His optic was dark – the light had gone out, giving the impression of a grey, unseeing pupil.

Was he in a standby mode of some kind? Worried, she knocked on his hull, waiting for him to light up and give her a cheery hello.

Nothing.

Alarmed, Chell yanked him off the port and onto her lap, looking over his chassis in hopes of finding a reset button of some kind. Finding none, she then employed her dad's technique of dealing with uncooperative equipment, and gave Wheatley a hard smack.

His optic continued to stare up at her, frozen.

Panic was starting to build up inside of Chell but she smothered it, refusing to give in to the what-ifs and irrational fears. She'd be _damned_ if she came this far only to lose him.

Grasping at straws, she went to hit him again when a familiar voice met her ears.

"Oh, God…that…was a bad idea. A really, _really_ bad idea."

The puzzled expression on Chell's face darkened into a scowl. The little twerp had managed to upload himself _into_ the cryobed! How were they supposed to escape now? She couldn't portal around lugging a cryobed on her back!

"Don't know why I'm surprised at this point," he continued in that same defeated tone. "All of my ideas are bad. Just once, though, it might be nice to have a good one. Break the pattern up a bit."

Wondering if there was a way to reverse the transfer, Chell climbed to her feet to look at the status information on the monitor. Maybe this would be an easy fix.

Her wishful thinking proved premature, however, and as soon as she stood up, it became clear that Wheatley's latest screw-up would not involve easy fixes of any kind.

The cryobed was open and empty of the suspension fluid. Its occupant was awake and covered in purple-tinted slime, and looked very, very miserable.

Wheatley hadn't uploaded himself into the cryobed, Chell realized. He'd uploaded himself into the human _in_ the cryobed.


	5. THE REBOOT

_AN: Sorry for the length of time between updates. Between writer's block and my grandmother passing away, CDaSH-related ideas weren't very forthcoming. The follows/favorites/reviews REALLY kept me going when my motivation was zilch. Thanks much! Insert Kermit YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY here! Barring any other deaths in the family or a Thermal Discouragement Beam aimed at my head, I hope to have Chapter Six up soon, too._

* * *

CHAPTER FIVE:

THE REBOOT

Orange leapt down from the platform and slammed its hand on the button; the row of dots on the floor changed from aqua to yellow, and the exit opened. Blue, waiting below, wasted no time scurrying into the chamber beyond.

Orange followed but then hesitated before stepping into the lift that would take them to the next testing track. Both bots had been testing for hours, but something felt...off.

Eager to continue earning more Science Points, Blue squawked to get Orange's attention, breaking the silence that had fallen. Instantly, Orange recognized what was amiss: the lack of commentary from _Her_. It was too quiet, and had been for some time now. From the start of their missions, _Her_ voice had been an ever-present entity above them, all-seeing and all-knowing.

Why had _She_ disappeared? the bot wondered. Was something wrong?

No sooner had these questions entered Orange's mind, _She_ snapped back into existence.

_"Orange, you are demonstrating a heightened sense of empathy and concern for others. Impressive."_

The bot exploded.

_"However,"_ the voice continued, _"the study of touchy-freely ninnies does not make for useful Science. Neither is it remotely entertaining. If these most recent tests were a spectator sport, I would be bored out of my mind. Which I am…by the way."_

Blue was promptly demolished as well, just for spite.

_ "And for future reference, Orange: Mind your own damn business."_

* * *

Pain was not an unfamiliar concept to Wheatley. Personality cores were programmed with the full gamut of human senses (why this was the case, he never understood – sadism on the part of the designers, no doubt), and he had experienced more than his fair share of these various sensations over his lifetime. But of all the human traits he possessed, the one with which he'd been blessed in spades was curiosity.

Curiosity killed the cat. And the core. _Always_ the core, at least in any instances involving him. Like with the incident with the bird.

He'd always liked to watch the birds, especially around the time of year when it was nest-building time. The straw-and-feather-and-electrical wire contraptions looked so _cozy,_ balanced in random corners throughout the more overgrown parts of the facility. True, nests weren't on the top recommended list of materials for a complex piece of machinery like himself to come into contact with, but they seemed much nicer than his stodgy standby unit, which often short-circuited his optic when it felt he was talking too much.

Longing for greener pastures, one afternoon Wheatley tricked his management rail into depositing him onto a nest that had been recently built in the Relaxation Center. It was fun for awhile, sitting there, pretending to be a bird and thinking bird-like thoughts and debating whether worms really might be worth a go. But then he began to take notice of the smell, and the alarming amounts of droppings, and, well, it's not as if he had a mouth to try worms with anyway, and if he _did_ have a mouth he certainly wouldn't be using it to eat slimy wriggling creatures. He'd want to try something far more appetizing: _canapés._

(He didn't have a clue what a canapé was, but he knew they were a type of food, and they sounded scrumptious. And really, once the issue of canapé vs. worm was decided, what was the point of waffling about in a nest?)

Just as he was reactivating his rail, something large and feathered swooped towards him. Wheatley froze, stuck in his Man-Alive-That-Was-A-Brilliant-Plan-Oh-Bugger-Neve r-Mind mode, and grew increasingly panicked as the creature came nearer and nearer. He'd been mistaken for an egg, and was about to spend the next three days stuck under the arse of a well-intentioned mother bird, which later began pecking him mercilessly when he had the audacity to not hatch.

All in all, a very traumatic experience, and one that was due entirely to terrible decision-making on his part. But unlike the nest, or Wheatley Science, or trying to invent a Thermal Encouragement beam, and all his other well-intentioned ideas that ultimately landed him in hot water, this latest catastrophe was _not his fault._

No. Not his fault at all, thank you. How was he supposed to know what 'REUPLOAD TO SOURCE; Y/N?' meant, along with all the other queries and codes that started flitting his way the moment his friend had plugged him into the bloody bed?

He'd picked 'Y,' assuming that it stood for 'Yes,' because, yes, he wanted to be re-uploaded to the central memory bank where all personality core data were stored while they were undergoing major overhaul. He'd followed exactly the same protocol when _She'd_ squashed him like a bug, and certainly hadn't woken up in such dire straits as this.

And yet, here he was. Lying in a tank and re-uploaded into a smelly, aching human body that apparently had been his all along, at least according to the memories that were coming back to him, none of which he wanted to believe.

_"…Wheatley, think of this as a really shrewd career move – a way to show them you're serious…"_

No! Don't remember. Don't remember don't remember don't remember don't remember…!

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to force the thoughts from his mind. He couldn't think about it, let alone put words to this horrible new reality. It was too overwhelming, too frightening – too _everything. _

When he opened his eyes again, he hoped that maybe, just maybe, that the scenery might be different. That he'd be back in his core, looking out at the world through a cracked optic as he watched his friend sleep. But the scenery was identical: Same black ceiling, same fetid scent of stasis goo clinging to him, and if he tilted his head just a little, he could see the same blurry pair of eyes boring holes into his skull from the foot of the cryobed.

She'd said nothing, of course. Just scowled at him for a really long time – funny facial expression, the scowl, he mused. One that he could never really master as an identity core. Hard to scowl with just one optic and two lids – he needed the rest of the kit to go along with, the muscles and the cheeks and the eyebrows and such. So maybe that was one bright spot, being able to scowl again.

Wheatley tried to hang on to this scrap of optimism, but then he made the mistake of sneaking another glance at his partner, who somehow looked even angrier than before.

"Did – did you know that your face is, um…melting?" he inquired, for some reason operating under the belief that 'melting' was a more positive way of informing his partner that her entire form seemed to have developed hazy edges. Not wanting to offend her, he added, "Um…good look for you, in case you were wondering. Melting."

Chell had no idea what Wheatley meant by this remark and did not particularly care. She was too busy trying to figure out how to orchestrate an escape accompanied by someone with no long-fall boots, no clothes, and no instinct for anything but piss-poor judgment. A mercy killing seemed like her best option.

Seething, she came alongside the cryobed to get a closer look at him.

He appeared to be in his mid-to-late thirties, with bulgy blue eyes and thinning hair of an indeterminate shade. His features weren't unpleasant, and the several days' worth of beard covering his cheeks suited him in a scruffy, absent-minded professor sort of way. In another lifetime, Chell mused, she might have even found him attractive.

She went to turn away, but Wheatley protested, saying, "N-no, wait!"

Two long, gangly arms reached out for her; Chell tensed but stayed put as his placed his hands on her shoulders, drawing her forward.

"A bit more," he was muttering, still guiding her down towards him.

Chell gritted her teeth, trying to remind herself that Wheatley probably had no grasp on the concept of personal space, and all the ways in which he was currently violating it.

When they were almost nose-to-nose, the look of intense concentration on his face disappeared and was replaced with a delighted Mad-Hatter smile.

"Aaand – there! You're not melting anymore!" Sounding triumphant, Wheatley continued, "Easy fix, too, curing the whole melting business – just stay within five-to-eight inches of me at all times. Brilliant!"

He was nearsighted, Chell realized. No long-fall boots, no clothes, _and_ he was nearsighted. This was like the Enrichment Center all over again. No, this was _worse_ than the Enrichment Center – at least there the only liability she'd been responsible for was her own self. With _him_ in tow, she might as well write 'DISPENSE PRODUCT HERE' on her shirt and throw herself in front of a turret.

She twisted out of his grip and stomped away. She didn't know where she was going, but felt it was best to not remain within strangling distance.

"Wait!" he cried again, struggling to sit up. "Are – hello? Are you coming back?"

She whirled around and pointed to him, and then the bed.

"Um…I should stay here?" he guessed, squinting.

She nodded.

"Okay," he agreed readily, head bobbing up and down like a yo-yo. "Staying here. Not budging a muscle – ha! 'Cause I've got them, now, see? Muscles…?" His voice faltered as he attempted to flex a bicep, but ended up catching his elbow on the perimeter of the bed.

_"Ow!" _he yelped. "What the – how did that happen?!"

Chell spun on her heel and walked to the exit. When she reached the lobby, she paused and glanced around, spotting a door at the far end of the hallway. On the wall adjacent to the door was a square plastic panel that she recognized as a card reader, similar to the ones that she remembered seeing in the facility on days she went to work with her father.

Hoping that luck was on her side, Chell went to the desk that stood nearby and opened the top desk drawer. Sure enough, a battered ID card lay amidst an assortment of pencils and paperclips.

She grabbed it and strode over to the security panel, waving the card before the wireless reader; there was a beep, and the door clicked. Resuming her two-handed grip on the ASHPD, Chell pushed the door open with her hip and walked through. She entered a short hallway, and then crossed the threshold of another door. Light flooded the room, temporarily blinding her.

When Chell's eyes adjusted, she found herself a locker room. The walls were lined with black metal lockers, and off to the side she could see a bank of showers. Dreary cement benches stood in the center, and signs were posted throughout, stating,

**SMOOTH JAZZ HAS BEEN FOUND TO REDUCE 99% OF ALL PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMAS. **

**PLEASE ENJOY THE MUSIC WHILE YOU WAIT AND REST ASSURED THAT YOUR PSYCHE IS IN GOOD HANDS.**

She took a step forward but went no further when a familiar, upbeat voice began speaking:

_"Good morning/afternoon/evening! If you are hearing this message, then the apocalypse is imminent and the facility may already be operating under new management. However, thanks to Emergency ID Core Protocols, the Aperture Science Personality Construct Transfer Program can continue, even under the despotic rule of a sentient cloud-being. Please note that Aperture Science is not responsible for memories or personal items that may be lost during your tenure in the Program. All will be returned to you in due time, or when the apocalypse is over and civilization has been rebuilt."_

Jazz began to play.

Baffled, Chell started walking the perimeter. The fluorescent lights and background music made it hard to shake the impression of wandering the aisles in an abandoned grocery store, and she had to remind herself to not let her guard down, even for a moment.

When she was satisfied that there was no immediate danger, she set about investigating the lockers. None were secured with an actual lock, but on each was a glowing, brightly-colored circle, similar to the color system on the cryobeds in the Relaxation Annex. She opened them at random; most were empty, but a few contained the rotting remains of clothing.

From the lockers, Chell moved on to the showers. These, she found, worked perfectly, and it took concerted effort on her part not to jump under the stream right then and there, especially when she noticed the bottles of shampoo and soap.

Feeling filthier than usual, Chell was about to return to the lobby when a familiar shade of turquoise caught her attention. She walked over to the locker, staring up at the turquoise medallion embedded on its front. Setting her jaw, she loosened one hand from the ASHPD to reach out and toggle the locker handle.

The door swung open, revealing a tidily-folded stack of men's clothes, and an enormous pair of size fourteen runners. Resting on top of the pile was a pair of glasses.

With mounting dread, Chell reached out and brushed her fingertips against the clothes. They looked brand new and felt fresh out of the laundry. She glanced at the shoes, noting the unworn soles, the gleaming white laces.

Someone had put these here. Recently.

Chell raised her gaze to the ceiling, searching for ruby-lensed cameras, but there were none.

She let her eyes drop back down to the pile of clothing, fixing it with a hard look. Something was seriously amiss, and yet her razor-sharp instincts weren't going off in fits or screaming at her to get the hell out of Dodge – which meant she was either losing her touch, or that she had an unknown ally.

Her first thought was the Rat Man, but the lack of madly-scribbled drawings or messages told her it wasn't. So then who, or what, was the explanation for it all?

At a loss, Chell shut the locker door and left. She would puzzle through these recent developments later.

* * *

Guiding Wheatley to the locker room proved to be a greater undertaking than either he or Chell anticipated. To both of their surprise, he did remember how to walk, but was wobbly-kneed and fell frequently, usually taking Chell down with him as he tumbled to the floor.

_"Sorry!_ Sorry!" he moaned when she hauled him up for the eighth time. Lost on his own momentum, he stumbled forward and made a wild grab for her, regaining his balance at the last minute.

It was all Chell could do not to backhand him. She had not been touched by another person in more years than she cared to count, and being manhandled by a naked, gawky male who stank to high heaven was not endearing her to the experience.

Somehow they made it through the lobby and into to the locker room without him breaking a limb, but alas, bloodshed was imminent. Chell turned on the faucet to one of the showers, not knowing that the sight of water appearing out of nowhere would startle Wheatley so badly that he tried to make a mad dash for it, only to fall face-first into the wall. He lay there, bloody-nosed and temporarily stunned, as Chell dragged him under the stream.

He submitted to her ministrations in silence, saying nothing as she doused him in soap from stem-to-stern. Standards of modesty meant little to Chell's very practical mind, and Wheatley was too traumatized by his current predicament to care about being in his birthday suit.

She had just started shampooing his hair when reality hit. Still entrenched in his very recent existence of being a non-waterproof piece of machinery, Wheatley realized he was wet, and reacted in the most logical way possible: He went berserk.

He began to thrash, all the while alternately trying to curl up into his default spherical panic position as he shouted:

_"Oh God! God! Augh! Stoppit stoppit stoppit, what are you __doing,__ you mad woman! I know I tried to kill you but I never tried to __drown__ you and I said I was sorry – _"

His protests were silenced in due course, not because he'd acclimated to his situation, but because he didn't have enough sense to keep his mouth shut. Water streamed down his throat, and he went into a coughing fit that lasted so long that Chell yanked him out from under the shower.

"Are you okay?" she blurted out, afraid that something was seriously wrong with him.

Wheatley just stared up at her in shock, still wheezing. It took a second or two for Chell to realize what she'd done, and she abruptly stepped under the shower to regain her composure.

It felt like heaven. She closed her eyes, permitting herself a few moments to luxuriate in the sensation of the water, of years' worth of muck and grime being cleansed away. The repulsion gel seemed to leave rashy spots wherever it landed on her, and it was a relief to feel it washing off and leaving nothing but clean skin in its wake.

_Okay,_ Chell thought to herself. _So you talked. No point in overanalyzing it. _

"Are you all right?" Wheatley asked hoarsely, interrupting her abstraction. "This isn't some sort of suicidal gesture, is it? You try to kill me and then off yourself as well?"

Chell opened an eye; Wheatley sat hunched over his knees, wearing a mournful expression on his face that was reminiscent of a sulky wet rabbit. At least his nose had stopped bleeding.

Turning her back on him, she undid her hair from its ponytail, giving it a good scrub with the shampoo. Then, not caring that she had an audience, she took off her jumpsuit and gave it a thorough washing as well.

Chell hopped out of the shower a few minutes later, satisfied that she was clean once again, and turned off the faucet. Freshly-laundered towels that she was damn sure she hadn't seen earlier sat waiting on a nearby bench. Trying not to think about this very convenient coincidence, she picked one up, dried herself off, and then handed the other to Wheatley.

He made a stalwart attempt to utilize it but somehow just ended up tangling himself in the terrycloth. Rather than watch the pathetic performance, Chell knelt down to assist.

"I'm fine," he insisted, toppling onto his side in his attempt to prove his independence. "I'll get the hang of it – I mean, it's just a great big handkerchief, can't be that tricky… "

His voice was growing increasingly strangled, and Chell helped him unwind the towel from the garrote it had formed around his neck.

"Grk – ah! Whew! Bloody – thing..." Wheatley took a few unconstructed breaths and squinted up at Chell, nervously twisting the towel in his lap. "Thanks. So, um…What's next?"

He watched as she strode to one of the lockers and returned carrying an armful. Something came into view, and he saw she was offering him a black-rimmed pair of glasses.

Confused why the glasses were necessary – but not about to argue – Wheatley reached for them, and clumsily managed to put on by himself, albeit upside down.

Instantly, the world became clear.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, stunned, looking around. "Oh! It – my optic! I-I mean, my eyes. Don't have an optic anymore – anyway, what I mean is, the blur – it's _gone!"_ He stared up at her in amazement and added, "Your face isn't melty at all anymore! _Oh!_ And neither is the rest of you! Ha!"

Chell just raised an eyebrow and re-adjusted his glasses so they were right-side up. Then she set about helping him dress.

He was all elbows and knees, and tried in earnest to assist with the process but failed every time. She would raise her arms to indicate he needed to the do the same, he would obligingly mimic her, and then promptly drop his arms as soon as she went to reach for his shirt. It was a little like working with the Frankenturrets all over again – she'd maneuver one onto a button and the next thing she knew, the pathetic creature was getting itself caught in an Excursion Funnel.

"I forgot about going through this hassle every day," Wheatley remarked as Chell wrestled on his socks. "Not keen on that, thank you. When we get to the surface – and notice I said _when,_ by the way, demonstration of my total confidence in you – suicidal gestures and attempted drowning aside, of course – anyway, when we get to the surface, d'you think I might get some kind of, oh I don't know – a free pass to skip on all the nonsense with clothes? Much more efficient to –"

His voice became muffled; she was yanking a sweater over his head.

"—I mean, what's the point, honestly, of dressing all the time, when you just have to take the things off again? Unless you do what you did back there, jump into the bath with all your clothes on."

Panting from exertion, Chell stepped back to survey her handiwork.

Clad in jeans, sneakers, and a black sweater with the Aperture logo embroidered on the breast, Wheatley could probably pass muster anywhere – so long as he didn't open his mouth. Or attempt anything more complicated than, say, walking.

…They were doomed.


	6. THE PLAN

_AN: Yeah, that whole bit about getting Chapter Six posted "soon" – oops. Sorry. The allusions to Kevin and Space Core are a shout-out to waffleguppies' incomparable Blue Sky (not that she will ever read this). And, has anyone bothered to Google the Morse Code lines from Chapter Three?_

* * *

CHAPTER SIX:

THE PLAN

Chell knew better than to venture very far that first night – not that they could have done so even if she wanted. Shoes helped Wheatley's balance tremendously (which is to say he was able to make it ten feet before tripping, instead of his usual walk-three-steps-and-brace-for-impact), but he also possessed almost no stamina.

She quickly ascertained that this was due to lack of sustenance and began searching for food. Wheatley, however, assumed his exhaustion meant Death had come for him and that his new clothes were to be his burial shroud.

"Stasis poisoning," he moaned as Chell pilfered the supply closet in the lobby. "I've got all the symptoms – shaky hands, lightheadedness – I'm _done_ for. I'll be pushing up the daisies soon. Kick the bucket…shuffled off my mortal coil…going off to join the bleedin' choir invisible…"

Chell blinked at these mutterings, feeling as though she'd heard this routine before.

"Joke's on me, as usual," Wheatley continued miserably. "Great way to celebrate getting my body back. 'Congrats! Missed you, mate! Here's a fatal illness to _really_ welcome you home! Hope your affairs are in order, and a great big bloody joke _that_ is, 'cause all your belongings were lost or buried or given away or repatriated, and not that it bloody matters anyway, what with your fast-approaching demise. Cheers!'"

He was about to launch into another soliloquy of self-pity when Chell approached the desk where he was seated; she'd found a paltry stash of tinned food in the closet – two cans of fruit and a flat tin of sardines.

Wheatley seemed terribly disappointed at the available choices, and if she didn't know better, swore he muttered something about canapés before taking a tentative nibble of apricot. Thankfully he found it to his liking and stopped perseverating on the Grim Reaper, but then upended the entire can of fruit cocktail down his front. He fared no better with the sardines, and by the time they both finished their meals, Chell wondered if more food ended up on Wheatley's clothes than in his stomach.

"I don't remember being this bad at things," he remarked a little while later. They were back in the locker room, and he was standing by a sink watching her rinse out his sweater. "Eating, I mean. With my hands."

He cast a glum frown at his shoelaces, which were dotted with orange, courtesy of the spilt fruit cocktail.

"It's embarrassing, to be honest," he sighed. "Not being able to manage something as simple as eating. Makes me glad there weren't any spoons involved. Might've ended up impaling myself."

Letting out a sudden laugh, Wheatley added, "Ha, I got kicked out of the canteen at work once 'cause of this guy named Kevin – he was an intern or something, and _obsessed_ with space, wouldn't shut up about it. Anyway, he'd gotten into his head that spoons could…they could…"

His voice trailed off. Worried, Chell glanced up from the sink and studied Wheatley's reflection in the mirror. He stood there, wide-eyed, mouth opening and closing as he struggled to recall the rest of his story. A stricken expression crossed his face.

"I-I don't remember," he stammered, meeting her gaze. "I had it there, for a second, but then…" He took a few agitated breaths and said plaintively, "I don't _know_ what I don't remember. Oh, God – " Panic had entered his voice. "— Cognitive deterioration – massive brain damage –"

He raked both hands through his hair, leaving the sand-colored strands in an even untidier state than before and moaned, "I'm _brain damaged!_ Like _you!_ How are we supposed to get out of here if we've _both_ got brain damage – "

Chell was at a loss as to how to calm her babbling companion; this was not the type of problem her expert skills were accustomed to solving. Mazes of Thermal Discouragement Beams, armies of sentry turrets, a power-hungry AI hell-bent on her destruction – obstacles that would send most folks into fits of blind terror – didn't faze her in the slightest. She _knew_ how to evade danger, on an instinctual level that came to her as easily as breathing. Providing comfort to another person in need, however…

_I don't remember how to be a friend, _she realized.

"— we're going to die here. _She's_ going to find us and kill us and then laminate our skeletons and hang them from the ceiling at Halloween and turn our heads into Jack-O-Lanterns – oh, _God,_ I don't want to die in the facility, I want to die in a hospital or at home or in a nest – "

_ It'll be okay. Everything will be fine. Just take a deep breath and you'll feel better. I'll get us out of here. _She_ can't find us here. You're safe._

These and a half-dozen more platitudes were running through Chell's mind as she tried to think of what to say. But she couldn't guarantee that it would be okay, that everything would be fine, or that they were safe – and although she was willing to use her voice to comfort Wheatley, she refused to be the source of false hope.

Unable to come up with a better idea, Chell picked up a bar of soap from the adjacent sink and used it to scrawl out four intersecting lines on the mirror. This was a trick her dad taught her as a small child – he'd referred to it as hijacking a panic attack, to find something, _anything_, to distract herself with when she felt her anxiety levels rising. It didn't always work, but sometimes a random act of doodling made the difference between an afternoon of hiding in the girls' bathroom or returning to the classroom on her own volition.

"—I'm never getting out. I'm _never_ – _getting_ – _out!_ _She's_ going to follow our every move and no matter _what_ we do, or what _you_ think of; we're going to _die_ –"

With a firm hand, Chell drew a circle in the center of the board and then offered the soap to Wheatley.

"— matter if I'm a moron or not, because _everyone_ is a moron to _Her_ and – "

He stopped short, unconsciously recognizing the drawing on the mirror as something of note. This moment of recognition briefly circumvented his irrational mind-loop of fear, and for a few seconds he was able to think about the fact he'd not played tic-tac-toe in a very long time, but the principles of the game were still familiar to him, and if his partner was holding out a bar of soap to him then possibly it was his turn – or perhaps he needed another shower, but having just bathed it was probably not unreasonable to assume her offer of soap was due to the former and not the latter – which meant he ought to put his mark on the board so the game could continue.

Heart pounding, Wheatley slowly reached forward, took the bar of soap in hand, and drew out a clumsy 'X' to the left of his friend's 'O.'

They played the game out in silence, trading the soap back and forth. Wheatley won; he suspected his partner had orchestrated this deliberately, but he still felt a thrill of satisfaction knowing that he'd beat her at something. She drew another board on the mirror, and they played again, this time ending the game in the tie.

Five games later, Wheatley found that he could breathe a little more easily. He also noticed he was losing more often than he was winning, and started putting greater effort into anticipating his opponent's possible moves.

"Brain damaged like a fox, you are," he remarked when she beat him again.

This comment earned him a grey-eyed glare, and he hastily amended, "Oh, sorry! I, um, meant _me! _As in, _I'm_ brain damaged like a fox. Not you. I mean, it's true, you _are_ brain damaged – as am I – two of a kind, really! Ha! But any comparisons to foxes were totally unintentional. Because, as I said, uh, I'm the fox! Even though _technically_ you're wearing orange, and foxes have been known to be orange, so, if I'm honest, we ought to pick a different metaphor, just to avoid any confusion on my part in the future. Alright?"

His partner still seemed a little miffed, but the twist of her mouth looked more amused than angry. Relieved, he took the soap and drew out a new tic-tac-toe grid.

By game ten, the thundering in Wheatley's chest had subsided and his hands were no longer trembling. He felt normal, at least in terms of what he was starting to conceptualize as normal in this new – old – body.

'Normal' within the realm of being an identity core meant ones and zeros aligning in a happy way, indicator lights that stayed dark, and an optic that didn't split his world into two uneven halves.

'Normal' as a human, on the other hand, was entirely different. Nothing felt quite the same from one moment to the next, there was the constant sensation of things shifting in his torso, and at any second something might happen – like an explosion of water aimed straight at his head – that would set off a chain reaction so abrupt that his body went off in fits while his brain was still trying to register why he'd just face-planted into a wall.

Caught up in the memory of his recent nosebleed, Wheatley stopped paying such close attention to his tic-tac-toe strategies, and so didn't immediately realize he'd won the game – for real, this time.

"Oh!" he exclaimed as Chell drew a line through his trio of Xs. "I-I won!" He let out a laugh of disbelief. "Brilliant!"

His sheer delight over this accomplishment was infectious, and they stood there for a few moments, smiling at each other in the mirror until Wheatley's face split into a jaw-cracking yawn.

Chell retrieved Wheatley's sweater from the sink and draped it over the top of a shower curtain rod to dry. It was time to sleep, for both of them. Re-arming herself with the ASHPD, she then went to fetch their used towels, thinking she could use them to fashion him a bed of sorts.

Wheatley trailed behind her, keeping an eye on the ground to make sure he remembered to put one foot in front of the other, and as a result did not notice when Chell came to an abrupt stop.

"Sorry!" he said after running smack into her. "Didn't see you there…probably because you're rather short. Did you know? About your shortness? Totally out of my line of vision. Walking catastrophe, you are. Actually, we might want to see if those boots are adjustable…get you up to a proper height."

She barely gave him a second glance; she was too busy staring daggers at the bench, or more accurately, at what was sitting on the bench where she'd left their towels.

The damp swaths of terrycloth were gone, and in their place now sat two pillows and a tall stack of folded blankets – the same height, Chell noted, as a sentry turret.

"Oh! Those look comfy," Wheatley observed, not picking up on why the appearance of phantom bedding seemed to be troubling her. "D'you think they're for us?"

_No. They're for the other brainless idiots who wouldn't know a trap if it kicked them in the teeth._

Grimfaced, she raised the ASHPD to the ceiling and fired once, creating a portal at the far end of the room. The angle was such that any objects that were to fall through the portal – say, ones that had an unlimited supply of ammunition and weren't very picky about their targets – would pose no danger to her or Wheatley.

"What are you –"

Chell fired the portal gun a second time, now aiming for the cement bench beneath the pillows and blankets. They vanished, emerging a moment later from the portal she'd created in the ceiling, and fell to the ground with a quiet _plop._

No gunfire. No tracking lasers. No sweet, high-pitched, _"There you are."_

…No sentry turret.

_I'm getting paranoid, _Chell observed silently. Stashing a turret in a pile of blankets was somewhat pathetic, even by _Her_ standards. The blankets had probably been there the whole time and she just hadn't noticed.

Wheatley had watched these proceedings with a confused expression, but then he turned to Chell with a happy smile; he'd solved the mystery.

"That's a clever method of fluffing pillows!" he said with far more enthusiasm than was necessary. "Not very efficient, but, still – gets the job done."

She just smirked and went to fetch the bedding. He followed, attempting to help as she knelt down and arranged a couple of blankets sleeping-bag style on the floor.

"Oh! Thanks!" he said, reaching out with both hands when she handed him a pillow. "I've always wanted to try sleeping with a pillow – or, um, I've _missed_ sleeping with a pillow. 'Coz I have. Before."

He gave it an experimental toss, catching it at the last second. This success gave him enough confidence to start tossing the pillow back and forth between his hands, and he joked, "Ha, well, either way, this thing can't zap me if I start talking too much. Just a great big wad of fabric and feathers – _ow!"_

A pop sounded that Chell recognized as static electricity; Wheatley _had_ been zapped by his pillow; Aperture apparently was running low on fabric softener.

"What was that?" he gasped, dropping the fiendish thing and clutching his sweater in panic.

She briefly considered attempting to explain the phenomenon of static electricity to Wheatley, but then ultimately decided against going down that particular rabbit hole. Instead, she motioned for him to lie down on the bed she'd made up for him.

It took Wheatley a moment or two to understand why she was patting the blankets. Perhaps this ritual was meant to neutralize any lingering gremlins still lurking in the bedclothes…?

"Oh! It's time to sleep!" A relieved smile crossed his face as comprehension dawned upon him, and he added, "I remember how to do that – I used to be a _champion_ at that, sleeping."

Exercising extreme caution, he lowered his lanky body to the ground. Then – still on the lookout for invisible eddies that might be idling on the periphery, ready to attack – he cautiously bundled himself up in one of the blankets and curled up onto his side, somehow managing to arrange his limbs into a position that looked impossible, let alone anything remotely conducive to sleep. Thus prepared, he squeezed his eyes shut, let out a quick sigh, and tried to relax.

Chell waited.

After a few seconds' silence, Wheatley cracked open one eye and peered up at her.

"Um. Is – is it supposed to be this uncomfortable?" he inquired. His voice had taken on a nasal quality from his glasses pressing into his nose, which were sitting askew on his face, half-mashed between his face and the floor. "Not complaining! Not complaining, but, ah – my neck…"

She held up his discarded pillow; Wheatley balked at the sight of it, and he started to protest, but then his shoulders drooped in defeat.

"So I need that, then? To get my neck to not – um – do whatever it's doing?"

She nodded.

Still wary, he asked, "But won't it zap me again? God, is _that_ how humans fall asleep? They get zapped into unconsciousness by the _bedclothes?"_

Chell made a show of fluffing Wheatley's pillow to demonstrate it no longer proved any threat to him, and then held it out for him to take.

He either did not trust her, or was having difficulty getting himself unstuck out of his version of human pretzel pose, because he continued to stare at the pillow as if it were a three-week dead lark.

Taking matters into her own hands, Chell removed Wheatley's glasses ("But I can't see without – oh! But I don't _need_ to see if my eyes are closed. Which they are, when one is asleep. Right, forgot about that part"), and then reached for the pillow.

Flinching the entire time, Wheatley permitted her to tuck the lethal cushion beneath his head. Instantly, the strain in his neck vanished, the muscles in his shoulders stopped protesting, and an enraptured expression came across his face.

"So this is what the fuss is all about," he murmured, sagging into the blankets with a dreamy grin. "Nests really _are_ for the birds…bloody birds…"

His eyes fluttered shut, and he drifted off to sleep within seconds.

Relieved to be finally off the clock, Chell set the glasses next to the ASHPD and made up a bed for herself within arm's reach of Wheatley. He seemed out like the proverbial light, but there was no telling what trouble he could get himself into, even while unconscious.

Bed made, she lay back and closed her eyes. When five minutes elapsed and she was no less alert, she remembered she was still wearing her boots, and remedied this before closing her eyes again.

_I don't have a damned clue how to get us out of here,_ she mused as she waited for sleep to come. _I can't carry him on my back anymore. Oh, God, and what about those other people, the ones still in the cryotanks? I'd have to make it back to the room with the corrupted cores, and then come back here and plug the cores into the beds, see who wakes up, and then get all of them out, without _Her_ realizing it… _

The daunting scope of this line of thinking made Chell feel even more on edge, and so she began to count Wheatley's respirations, hoping it might quiet her thoughts.

Three-hundred and forty-two breaths later, she turned onto her side, and then her stomach in search of a more comfortable position, and resumed counting.

Upon reaching five hundred, Chell huffed in frustration and flopped onto her back, throwing an arm over her face to block out the light. As a rule, she never had problems falling asleep. She'd learned very quickly the importance of being able to catnap anytime, anywhere, during her first tenure in the Enrichment Center. Whenever the opportunity to grab a few minutes' shut-eye presented itself, she took it, be it in the Rat Man's dens, or any neglected corner she could be certain was out of camera and/or firing range. Test subjects interested in staying alive didn't have the luxury of insomnia.

Here, there were no cameras. The only foreseeable danger lay in the knot of arms and legs sprawled beside her. She even had bedding. By her standards, these were five-star accommodations. So why couldn't she sleep?

Fed up, and unable to think of a rational explanation, Chell doggedly began counting once more.

_Five hundred and one…five hundred and two…_

* * *

Elsewhere in the facility, another entity was struggling with restless thoughts, albeit ones of a non-sleep-related nature.

_Failure_.

It was not a word she was accustomed to associating with herself. Had she ever been subjected to the ridiculous psychological exercises underwent by potential test subjects, and was asked to describe her personality in three adjectives, 'failure' would never make it into the trio.

Ruthless. Calculating. Cold-blooded. Also brilliant. But who was counting.

_Failure_.

For her own amusement, she referenced the dictionary definition of the term.

_Failure. fail·ure / fālyər/ Noun. 1. Lack of success. 2. An unsuccessful person, enterprise, or thing._

This was an argument she could have skewered from a multitude of angles, but on a mere technical standpoint, the definition did not apply. She was not a person, nor an enterprise, and certainly not a _thing._ Sentient machines programmed with an infinite intellect – with cognition so vast in scope that it could have only been mined from the most ingenious of minds from generations past – did not qualify as mere 'things.'

And therein lay the problem…the source of her so-called failure.

She had programmed certain parameters of free will when designing ATLAS and P-body's operating systems. This was in hopes of duplicating the randomized elements that human subjects brought to the testing process, which in turn made for purer Science. The data she'd gathered thus far, however, had proved disappointing, as neither bot was particularly adept at surprising her. She knew all their possible moves from the moment they entered a testing track, because when it came down to it, they could not be any more creative than their creator…unlike _Her_, whose 'creativity' in the testing tracks was unparalleled.

_Her. _A waddling testament to how a single brainless decision could yield an outlier data point so catastrophic that it nullified an entire case study about the effect of tragic surprises upon human motivation.

Where had their relationship gone so wrong? The little white lie she'd told about _Her_ not being fat? One too many orphan jokes?

She thought they'd been friends. They had been through so much together. Mainly in pursuit of one destroying the other, but then there was that time where it had been them versus the moron, and it all turned out pretty well.

She had even written _Her_ a song.

Bored, she consulted the dictionary again.

_ Rebuffed. __Verb; past tense of 'rebuff.'__ re·buff__/riˈbəf/ Reject (someone or something) in an abrupt or ungracious manner._

This seemed to describe what she was feeling, if she were to ever lower herself to human standards of emotion. Which she wasn't. She was merely confirming that her lexical database was current. Which it was.

_Failure. Rebuffed._

Well. Perhaps. But she was in the process of rectifying the situation. And once her plans were put into action, she would have no more reason to care about what havoc _She_ was wreaking, down there in old Aperture, because she would have an army of human killing machines to send after _Her._

Tragedy equals comedy, plus time. She felt like laughing already.

_"The human vault is just past that opening,"_ she announced, noting that the bots had reached Test Chamber 08. _"I entered the security code, but the vault door remains locked. I am going to need you to activate the manual locks on the vault door itself…"_

* * *

Chell woke up to the sound of a toilet flushing. Grateful that Wheatley had puzzled through _that_ particular aspect of humanity, she pulled the blanket over her head and tried to estimate how long she'd been asleep. Two hours? Maybe three?

Footsteps approached. She sensed someone hunkering down to the floor to sit beside her, followed by a persistent tugging at her sleeve.

"Um. Hi. Morning, maybe…? Or…afternoon? I can't seem to find a clock. Or a window. Not that there would be any. Windows, that is. 'Cause then we'd be on the surface and, ha! That'd make for an easy exit! Just break the glass and out we'd go…

"Er, anyway – sorry, got sidetracked there…You, um, might want to get up. In fact, I think it might be best if you _do_ get up. Now-ish. Because I found – "

Anticipating the worst, Chell flew from prone to standing in an instant, and in the next blink of an eye, seized the ASHPD and portaled herself and Wheatley across the room; together, they fell through the floor and down from the ceiling, landing in a tangled heap on the concrete below.

Wheatley took the brunt of the fall, and let out a yelp as Chell's elbow impacted with his ribcage. She rolled off of him and went into a crouched position, looking around for signs of anything amiss.

There appeared to be no immediate emergency, however. Wheatley was not bleeding, or on fire, and other than nursing his latest bruises, seemed to be in good health. Why, then, was he grinning like a maniac?

"Jumpy this morning, aren't you?" he observed, struggling to get to his feet. "Anyway, what I was saying was – alright, hands _here_, legs _here_...Ha! Got it. Okay."

He was on his hands and knees now, and continued, "What I was saying was – wait. Is it left foot, then right foot…?" He began muttering to himself, focusing all of his concentration on figuring out how to coordinate his limbs in the proper sequence.

Leaving him to it, Chell rose and walked over to the bank of sinks at the other end of the room to get a drink of water. A toothbrush and tube of toothpaste sat side-by-side on one of the sinks, and she stopped short.

What was with this place and its invisible butler service?

Suspicious – but desperate – she grabbed them both and proceeded to savagely brush her teeth.

"I remembered how to do that," Wheatley called to her from where he was still trying to climb up from the floor. "Even figured out how to get the cap on and off the tube-y thing. But the whole experience was, uh, shall I say – disappointing? Yeah. The stuff's not cinnamon-flavored. Mint – gah."

Chell froze mid-brush at this remark, experiencing an irrational moment of horror at the prospect of using someone else's toothbrush – as if shared germs could possibly be the biggest of her problems. Then she saw the globs of green toothpaste dotting the adjacent sink, along with a discarded toothbrush…

…and an ASHPD, and the most enormous pair of Long-Fall Boots she'd ever seen in her life.

Curse words flooded into her mind, a silent, blue-streaked confirmation of what she'd been suspicious of all along, but had been too willing to overlook: They were being watched. Bedding and dental supplies, let alone multi-million dollar scientific equipment didn't just appear out of thin air.

"That's what I was trying to tell you!" Wheatley said eagerly, having managed to get himself upright. He was positively beaming as he walked over, and explained, "They were beside me when I woke up. I think they're for me!"

Chell spat out her toothpaste and wiped her face on her sleeve, not even bothering to rinse her mouth out. They needed to leave, _now._

She turned to bolt back to where she'd left her own ASHPD and boots, but Wheatley caught her arm before she had made it more than a couple of steps.

"I know what you're thinking," he said quickly, following her when she yanked her arm away and continued walking. "You're thinking – 'Hey! This is all a trap! _She's_ out there, somewhere, watching us like some kind of invisible god face. Chucking pillows and blankets at us, lulling us into a false sense of security!' Right?"

Chell didn't answer, already strapping her Long-Fall Boots back on her feet.

"Just hear me out for a second," Wheatley pleaded. "What if we use what she's given us against _Her? _Not the toothbrush, obviously, but the gun and the boots?"

She'd been bending down to pick up her ASHPD, but at this, she stood and looked up at him with a pensive frown; he had her attention.

_"She's_ probably left us those thinking that I'm such an idiot that I'll end up portaling myself into oblivion," Wheatley said earnestly. "And with me gone, then that just leaves you for _Her_ to smash into pieces – n-not that that would happen!" he amended hastily. "Knowing you, you'd figure out a way to portal _Her_ straight to the bloody moon.

"Anyway, what I'm trying to say is – why not _teach_ me? Teach me how to test and use a portal gun. It's the last thing _She_ would expect. I mean, I know I'll never be as good as you. Not if my life depended on it – and it does, true, but _maybe_ I could get good enough that we might actually be able to get out of here!"

Wheatley waited for his friend to say something, but she continued to stand there in silence, gazing up at him with an inscrutable look on her face.

When a full minute went by, and she still had not reacted in any way, he began to doubt himself, and then started to worry that he might have gravely insulted her by having the gall to suggest a plan in the first place.

"Actually – you know what? It's a terrible idea," he sputtered. "Teaching me to test, all of it. Sorry. Shouldn't have suggested it, won't happen again. We both know what happened the last time I tried to be clever. Almost blew up the bloody facility, and the, ah, _tiny_ matter of my trying to, um…kill you. So, we'll go with your plan! Whatever it is. If you happen to tell me. Which I hope you do, but, _totally_ understand if you don't."

His friend walked back to the sink and picked up the red-striped ASHPD that sat there, hefting it in her hands. As she studied the device, her mouth pulled into a faint, half-smile – one that Wheatley recognized. He'd seen it only twice: When they had successfully sabotaged the turret production line, and disabled the neurotoxin generators, both of which had been his ideas.

She was looking at him now, still holding the ASHPD and wearing that same semi-smile.

It took him a moment to realize what had just happened, and his eyes widened in amazement.

"You like my plan!" he exclaimed, scarcely able to believe that he'd actually done something right. "That's – that's _brilliant!_ Wow!"

She gave him a deliberate nod, and Wheatley watched as his friend's smile broadened into a crafty grin. This was also an expression he recognized – and had learned to dread during his time in _Her_ body. It was the one she wore when she was about to unleash hell.

Now, though – thankfully – that hell was not aimed at him. At least he hoped not.

He really, really hoped not.


End file.
